Once Upon A Time There Was An Ocean
by ABadPlanWellExecuted
Summary: Rose had traveled through so many different parallels, ranging from the mundane to the bizarre, but now, looking out at the familiar London skyline, she wondered if she'd finally found home at last. Part of my Certain Dark Things series.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: **

_**Once upon a time, there was an ocean,  
But now it's a mountain range.  
Something unstoppable set into motion,  
Nothing is different, but everything's changed.**_

**- Once Upon A Time There Was An Ocean by Paul Simon**

Apparently, I name all my stories after songs now. Anywho, this story is a bit of an experiment. After reading through all my stuff, I came to the realization that my stories all involve a lot of standing around and talking. Hopefully, I'll actually get to some action in this one. (*Note: There will still be a lot of standing around and talking. I can't help it!)

**This story is part of my **_**Certain Dark Things**_** series of stories about Rose's Dimension Cannon jumps.**

Reentry was always a bitch.

The air around her crackled with a now-familiar, violent energy as her molecules forced their way into a new reality. The energy feedback from the Dimension Cannon sent her careening forward, and she ended up crashing into some black shape, tumbling arse over elbows, and hitting the thinly carpeted floor with a bone-rattling smack.

Groaning, Rose struggled to sit up. She kicked her leg, trying to free her ankle from a…computer chair? Yep, a big, black computer chair, now lying on its side, one wheeled foot still spinning crazily. Well, could have been worse, she figured—at least no one had been sitting in it. She scrambled up, hefting her shoulder pack, and scanned the room.

She was in a large office space, standing in one of many cubicles. Some version of late twentieth or early twenty-first century Earth, by the looks of it, and definitely human, judging by the framed pictures of smiling, waving children sitting on the closest desk. The room seemed to be empty, though, and a glance at a nearby clock told her why: it was 12:26 PM. Lunch hour.

"Well, looks like I've got the place to myself," she said, falling back into her habit of talking to herself during jumps. "Convenient, that."

Just to make sure, though, she did a quick walkthrough, because nothing was more annoying than getting arrested for trespassing while visiting parallel worlds. The room was definitely empty, but as she passed by the door leading out into the hallway, she spotted a few people milling around a water cooler a few doors down.

Human. Definitely human. Better and better.

Rose had traveled through so many different parallels, ranging from the mundane to the bizarre, but she had yet to find her own reality. Her team at Torchwood had high hopes that they were narrowing in on finding her native universe. As she approached a series of floor-to-ceiling windows and looked out, pressing a hand against the glass, Rose wondered if she had finally found it.

London. Definitely London. She could even see the Thames. Not a single bloody zeppelin in the sky.

Her hands trembled a little as she shrugged out of her shoulder pack and rooted around for her equipment. She pulled out the Native Universal Resonant Frequency gauge (otherwise known as NURF) and set it up on a nearby desktop, where it sat, looking vaguely like a short, squat, semi-adorable robot.

Rose was not fond of it.

"C'mon, you rotten little sod," she muttered as she snatched a paperclip out of a convenient dispensary and dropped it in the NURF's handy matter input valve. "Give me some good news for a change." She thumped the top of the machine's shiny black casing a couple of times for good measure.

The NURF ignored her abuse and happily accepted the sample, emitted a couple of productive-sounding bleeps and bloops, and began humming in a cheerful manner. A series of lovely little lights on the front undulated back and forth, indicating ongoing analysis. In a couple of minutes, she would have her answer.

The NURF was designed to measure the incredibly minute differences between the harmonic resonance of matter at the quantum level, and it compared its readings from each new parallel with a sample of matter from the target universe (in this case, a small clipping of hair that Mickey had been compelled to sacrifice). With the NURF, Torchwood had been able to map Rose's journey through hundreds of parallel worlds.

Moreover, because the NURF's design had received ample (and arguably unnecessary) input from Torchwood's User-Centered Design Group, it was an absolute paradigm of pleasant interactive usability. Rose's protest that she was the only actual NURF user and that it had virtually no marketability outside of this one mission had fallen on deaf ears. The NURF would be innovative, enjoyable, and user-friendly, and that was final.

During the past year and a half, Rose had come to deeply resent its simulated enthusiasm as she and the NURF had traveled through parallel after parallel. Something about the way it chimed so cheerfully every time it told her that she was in the wrong reality really got under her skin. In fact, the more happy the NURF seemed, the more annoyed Rose generally became.

Still, if this really was HER London… She left the NURF to its work and went to stand by the window. The building was quite tall, and the window commanded a nice view of the London skyline.

Something about it niggled at her, but Rose couldn't quite tell what it was. The room was warm and a bit stuffy, making her sleepy, so she shrugged off the blue leather jacket that she wore for every jump these days and stuffed it in her satchel while she waited. With some chagrin, she glanced down at her outfit. It was fortunate that no one was there to see her—black trousers, black vest, black boots, even black bra and pants…she looked like a villain in a James Bond movie.

It really wasn't her usual style. No matter her own personal feelings about being trapped in a parallel universe, Rose usually tried to _dress_ cheerfully. But she'd been putting in incredibly long hours at Torchwood these days as they got closer and closer to a successful jump, and her laundry pile had fallen by the wayside. Just that morning, she'd thought longingly of the TARDIS as she stared at the scant offerings left in her wardrobe and wondered what she wouldn't give to be back living in a ship that actually did her laundry for her (well, at least when it was functioning properly).

That the man she loved just happened to live on board that ship was really just a bonus, she'd thought with grin.

Behind her, the NURF let out a self-satisfied 'ping!' interrupting her thoughts and announcing that it had completed its analysis. Rose took a deep breath and crossed her fingers.

As she turned back toward the desk, something on the NURF caught her eye…a blinking green light. A NEW blinking green light, one she'd never seen before. With a shuddering breath, she almost tripped over herself to get back to the desk. She fumbled a little, picking it up, and stared at the little data screen on the front of the NURF.

_Native Universal Resonance…CONFIRMED. Congratulations, Rose Tyler._

"Oh my god," she breathed. "Oh my GOD!"

This was it. This was her Earth. This was her universe.

He was out there somewhere. She and the Doctor were occupying the same reality.

"OH MY GOD!" she squealed, dropping the NURF onto the desk with a clatter. She jumped up and down in glee, wrapping her arms around herself in the absence of anybody else to hug. "Ha! Impossible, my arse!" With feverish happiness, she snatched up the NURF, just to read the word _CONFIRMED_ again.

"You're certain," Rose sort-of said, sort-of asked, almost pleaded. "Maybe we should double-check?" She cleared out the matter input, her hands shaking, and grabbed a bit of an eraser off the desk. "Sorry about your office supplies, mate," she muttered to the absent desk occupant.

Several tense, finger-drumming minutes later, and the NURF gave its answer: she was _home_.

Or at least close enough.

Rose swooped down and kissed the NURF on its shiny, black casing before tossing it carelessly back in her bag. "Ok, so long, thanks for your many contributions to our cause!" she sang.

She pulled out another piece of equipment, one she hadn't had the chance to use yet. The Trans-Universal Resonance Transmitter, or TURT, was designed to gather the necessary coordinate information for this universe and beam it back to the Dimension Cannon in Pete's World. A successful transmission would mean that they would have the pan-dimensional coordinates necessary to repeatedly send Rose to this reality—no more random dimension hops.

The TURT wasn't ergonomic, was barely user-friendly, and completely lacked flash. Rose immediately preferred it to the NURF. She had never operated it before except in training, but she knew what to do—reviewing the tech's operational manuals prior to each jump was part of the Torchwood mission protocols.

She booted it up and scanned the small screen. _Data acquisition initiated…_ it read. _Total time until transmission completion—six hours twenty-six minutes. _

Well, she had some time to kill. She placed the TURT gently into her pack, where it could continue its process. Grinning ear-to-ear, she went back over to the window and pressed her hand against the glass.

Finally, she was here, in her own London. The first hurdle had been cleared.

Rose knew better than to think that it would be easy going from here on out. In fact, the hard work was really just beginning—now that they were in the correct parallel, she had to be incredibly careful during jumps so as to not disturb the timelines. It would still take a lot of effort to perfect the aim of the Dimension Cannon so that they could get her to the correct time and place, according to their timeline measurements.

With a leaping heart, she remembered what Jacobson, the senior Cannon Operations Technician had told her: once they managed to reach the correct parallel, it was likely that they'd be quite successful at getting her close to the correct point in the Doctor's timeline, thus reducing the dangers of causing a paradox. Certainly, she would at least be post-Canary Wharf for him, which would prevent her from running into herself. Proximal in time, but probably distant in space—he'd said the Doctor could be anywhere within a radius of a thousand miles from her landing location.

And that was fine, because, per the mission specifications, Rose was absolutely NOT supposed to attempt contact on the first jump. Her team at Torchwood would need time to analyze the data that she gathered on this jump and determine how close she was to the target point in time/space.

And she understood that. She really did. There was too much at stake to play fast and loose with causality. Wrong word, wrong time? Change an entire causal nexus.

Still, she thought, it wouldn't hurt to go out, get some chips, and stare up at a sky devoid of zeppelins constantly advertising Vitex, and the latest reality TV shows, and the fact that she was NOT in the right bloody universe. And somewhere out there, within a thousand miles, was the Doctor.

Rose briefly indulged in a fantasy in which she was sitting on a bench, eating chips, when the Doctor just happened to run by. "Hullo," she'd call out, all cool and casual. "Good to see you! How've you been?"

The look on his face would be priceless, she thought with a snort.

Then she shook her head. No way was that happening. Contact at this point would risk damaging the timelines, and they were precarious enough already. Besides, if she really did see him run past, Rose had the feeling she'd be tackling him in the street. With a sigh, she made her way through the work stations and poked her head out the door.

The hallway was clear; everybody seemed to have left for lunch. Rose spotted the sign for the lift, and she headed for it, the Doctor's old advice—walk about as though you owned the place—running through her head.

As Rose waited for the doors to open, the TURT started to beep from inside her pack. The lift arrived, and she rummaged around in her pack for the transmitter as she stepped inside. She hit the button for the ground floor absently, frowning at the TURT display, and barely noticing when someone else nipped inside the lift just before the doors closed.

The TURT was asking for the local time and date. Damn. She should have checked back in the office. Surely there were day calendars there. She'd just gotten too distracted by the view of from the windows.

"Hey, mate," she said still staring at the screen. "I don't s'pose you could tell us the date?"

"'Fraid not," he answered, HE answered, and _ohmygod, that voice, that accent_. Rose's head snapped up, and he was there, right there, standing next to her, STANDING RIGHT NEXT TO HER IN THE LIFT, in his old leather jacket, and his eyes, his piercing, ice-blue eyes were locked on the piece of tech in her hands. "Forgot to check, myself."


	2. Chapter 2

Rose didn't feel the moment her hand went slack, didn't register the TURT falling from her fingertips even as she stumbled back, one great breath shuddering through her body. Her back hit the lift wall, her eyes as big as saucers, and he stared back at her, brow furrowed, and he _so_ did not recognize her. _He didn't know who she was._ Wrong, wrong, wrong, oh god, this was such a mess, so very bad, and what the hell was she going to do now? Her hands snapped up reflexively to cover her face, but it didn't help because he'd already seen her and oh god acting this way was just drawing _more_ attention to herself and why, oh why of all days did she have to be dressed like a Bond villain?

_("Time's in flux, changing every second," he'd told her. "Your cozy little world can be rewritten like that.")_

Oh, she remembered. And because she did, she trembled.

But this was too big a potential disaster, and she couldn't afford to panic. Face still covered, she just tried to breathe—in and out, in and out. _Proximal in time, distant in space, my arse,_ she growled in her own thoughts.

When she got back to Torchwood, _if_ she got back to Torchwood, _heads were going to roll_.

"Erm," she said, just to try out her voice. She peeked out from between her fingers. He was looking at her like she was a complete lunatic, or an evil invading alien, or possibly both. She dropped her hands. "So…" she said, clearing her throat and crossing her arms, "is it too late to go with nonchalance?"

The Doctor chuckled a little. "Yeah, just a bit." He bent over and picked up the TURT.

"Just a bit," she agreed, uncrossing her arms. "Um." _Oh god oh god oh god…_

He turned the TURT over in his hands, inspecting it, but he kept shooting odd glances at her.

"Er, can I have my…ah, thing back?" She held out a hand hopefully and tried to ignore the way her arm was shaking.

"What is it?" He didn't seem inclined to hand it over.

"It's ah…it's a transmitter." Rose watched, transfixed as he looked it over, flipping it in his clever, capable hands, and she was nearly overcome with the urge to just tell him everything. This was the Doctor, _the Doctor_, and she'd been searching for him for so long. He could make it better, if anyone could. So what if it was a little early…if anything, that just made it all the more tempting. This was her first Doctor, the one from when she'd been young enough to believe he could do anything.

She'd stood on the deck of a Dalek ship, and he'd told her he was coming to get her, and she'd _believed_.

"That so?" he said, interrupting her musings. He flipped it over again and started to reach into an interior pocket of his jacket, the one in which, Rose remembered with a jolt, he kept the sonic screwdriver. The reality of the situation slapped her right across the face.

It was her job to prevent damage to the timeline because she was the one with the foreknowledge. There were so many things that he couldn't know about in advance, and time could be so very fragile. What most terrified her was that she had no idea whether she should try to do something to fix the situation and risk increasing the damage through further action or just walk away and hope for the best. And the irony of it all was that the one person who she most wanted to ask for advice was the one person she couldn't.

In an instant, Rose made her choice. She had jumped head-first into a situation like this before, and it had nearly destroyed the world. This time, she'd aim for caution. Noninvolvement.

"A transmitter, yep," she said, taking advantage of the Doctor's one-handed grip to yank the TURT out of his grasp. She quickly tucked it back into her pack. "It's nothing you need to worry about."

The Doctor's eyes narrowed. "I think maybe we should have a chat."

"Yeah," said Rose, shouldering her bag, "I really, really don't." The lift bell dinged and the doors slid open—time to make an escape. "You have a good day." She started to step out, trying to make a quick getaway, only to realize that the lift had stopped early to let someone on.

"Sorry, ma'am," the Doctor with false cheer to the waiting woman, "but this lift's busted. Best take the next one."

"But," protested the woman, her arms full of files.

"I'm with maintenance," interrupted the Doctor, slipping a hand in his jacket pocket to surreptitiously activate his sonic. The lift panel let out a spray of sparks. "We'll have it in proper order in no time."

"But…but," the woman repeated, staring at Rose.

Rose tried to step off the lift, but the Doctor quickly blocked her path. "Bye then," he said with a little wave to the poor beleaguered lady, and, with the faint whirring of the sonic, the lift doors suddenly closed.

He turned around to face her. "And as for you—"

"Great," interrupted Rose, annoyed. "Now she's gonna go report that there's suspicious people in the lift." At his raised eyebrow, she said, "You don't look like maintenance, and neither do I."

The Doctor looked her up and down slowly, and Rose felt her toes curl from the force of those blue eyes. "True enough," he allowed. "So, who are you then?"

Rose blew out a breath. She had no idea what to do to fix this, but telling him her name was definitely not a good idea. She was mildly tempted to rattle off some nonsense about feeling the turn of the Earth and the planet hurtling around the sun and all that, but that was probably just the adrenaline talking. "I think it might be better if we don't talk. Let's just get to the bottom floor and go our separate ways." _And hope for the best,_ she added silently.

The Doctor didn't answer, just looked at her thoughtfully for a moment and then pulled out the sonic. He pointed it to the lift panel, activated it, and the lift shuddered to a stop.

"There," he said, all bright smiles with hard edges, ignoring Rose's outraged gasp. "Now we have some time to kill. We should get to know each other. Let's start with your name and where and _when_ you're from."

Rose elbowed him away from the lift panel and tried to get it started again. "Don't tell me you fried it," she muttered after her attempts proved unsuccessful. "How are we going to get out of here?"

"It's just stalled," he said easily. "Now about that chat…"

Rose groaned and sunk to the floor, her back against the lift wall. She rubbed a hand over her eyes and dimly wondered whether the reapers would bother to break into the lift or if they'd just swallow it whole. "I can't risk talking to you," she said at last, when it was clear that he wasn't going to let up. "Might cause a paradox. Probably already caused a paradox. So let's ignore one another in hopes that space and time won't just rip apart at the seams, yeah?"

"You're from my future." It wasn't a question. Rose shifted her eyebrows in acquiescence. The Doctor just shook his head. "It's really not a problem. I occasionally run into people I haven't met yet—it's an occupational hazard, but it won't rip anything apart." He looked her over again, calculating. "So what's the Time Agency want with me?"

Rose's mouth popped open in surprise. "You think I'm a Time Agent?"

"Let's see…lots of fancy anachronistic gadgets…covered in trace time signatures…complete incompetence with paradoxes…yeah, I'm gonna say Time Agent."

She hopped to her feet. "I'm not a Time Agent," she said, strangely insulted. "And I'm not completely incompetent with paradoxes."

"If you say so," he said, rather ungraciously.

"I'm not! And I'm not a Time Agent, either—look!" She held out her wrists. "No vortex manipulator."

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "So you've tweaked your tech a little. Still traveling in time, aren't you?"

"Well, so are you." She folded her arms.

He smirked. "Yeah, but you're human." He said this like it was his trump card, like he was a half-second away from disparaging her species. Rose smoldered with indignation.

"I'm not a bloody Time Agent, and I'm not some casual acquaintance that you bump into in the future," she fumed. "Doctor, we have to do something to ensure there won't be a paradox."

He shrugged, but Rose thought she could see a flicker of unease at the use of his name. It was hard to tell—he was so much colder than she remembered. "I can suppress my own memories, if I have to," he said airily. "But I need a good reason to do it." He looked at her pointedly.

Rose pursed her lips. "So, what, preventing paradoxes isn't a good enough reason?"

He rolled his eyes again. "I need to know it's a serious enough paradox to make it worth the risk. Paradoxes come in all shapes and sizes, and not all of them are dangerous. 'Sides, I'm not really a fan of erasing my own memories, thanks." He crossed his arms and tapped his fingers against the leather of his jacket. "This is where you come in and tell me who you are and why this all matters so much. Including," he added, eyeing her bag, "what all that tech is for."

Rose ran her hand over the crown of her head, ruffling her hair and unconsciously mimicking his next regeneration. She could think of a thousand things to tell him, but she had the uncomfortable feeling that mentioning things like 'I'm popping back and forth through cracks in the void between parallel dimensions in an attempt to save all creation,' might not go over so well.

"I travel with you," she said at last. "I'm a companion of yours, from your future." There, that was nice and vague.

Apparently this wasn't enough. The Doctor didn't move, didn't uncross his arms, and his stare grew sharper. "I'm not looking for company, and I don't take Time Agents as companions. Try again."

It was funny; she had forgotten just how irritating he could be. "Er, yes, you are; yes, you do; and for the last time, I'm not a damn Time Agent."

His eyes were laser sharp. "Prove it."

Rose wracked her brain. The first things that came to mind—the Time War, Gallifrey, regeneration, Daleks, etc., she rejected outright. Too upsetting, she thought, especially for this version of him. And besides, other people had known about some of those things—Jack, for one. No, she needed something more specific and less incendiary.

"TARDIS." The word popped out of her mouth suddenly. "Stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space."

"That's not exactly a secret," he scoffed.

"But your TARDIS is special," she added. "Type TT-40, right? Have you installed the thing that looks like a bicycle pump on the console yet?"

He blinked at that and shifted, considering her.

"You've got a freckle," she said, suddenly inspired. "Just under your right ankle bone."

His eyebrows popped up, and then he glanced down his own leg, tugging up the cuff of his jeans to surreptitiously check if she was correct.

"Other side of your leg. And you like those diamond print socks they sell at Henrik's. And you take your coffee with just milk. You do your shaving with this old-fashioned razor blade with a pearl handle," she said, warming up to the subject. "And you are completely bananas for bananas, though I s'pose about a million people know that one. Ooh, and though you'd never admit it, watching EastEnders is a secret guilty pleasure."

"I don't watch EastEnders," he objected, sounding slightly insulted, though his ears had turned a bit pink.

"No?" Rose tapped a finger to her lips. "Maybe you just liked watching it with me then. On the tan couch. In the media room."

The Doctor tried and failed to look disdainful. Rose could tell she was starting to get through to him.

"You're sort of fond of those weird, futuristic reality shows, too. And you've got a fancy remote—the silver one with the big, red, threatening button on it," she added with a grin, even though he wouldn't get the joke. "And you're completely mad for Charles Dickens; you love…what was it?" She tapped her fingers against her leg thoughtfully. "The Signal-Man, right? Best short story ever?"

"Alright, you've made your point," he said in a softer voice. He looked her over again, appraisingly. "So we meet in the future… A new companion." He smiled a little. "Something to look forward to, I s'pose." His eyes warmed a little, and Rose felt her face blush in response.

He held his arms open. "How about a hug, then? For the sake of what's yet to come?"

The offer took her by surprise, given how dismissive he'd be just moments before, but still, Rose couldn't resist. Even though she knew that the new, new version of him was the same man, she still wished she could have said goodbye to her first Doctor properly. And besides, she remembered his mercurial moods in this body. With a bright smile, she stepped forward into his arms, and wrapped her own around his waist.

His strong arms slid around her, and Rose let out a shuddering sigh against the black leather, wishing for all the world that she could stay right there. Here, everything was safe. Everything was simple.

"It's gonna be fantastic—" she started to say when suddenly there was a loud whirring right behind her ear. "What…" she muttered, pulling back in surprise, and as she did so, she felt her shoulder pack break loose. The Doctor stepped back at the same moment, her pack in his hand, the strap cut by the sonic screwdriver.

He had a look of smug triumph on his face. "There now, that's better. Now let's have a look at what you've got in here."


	3. Chapter 3

The Doctor grinned. Honestly, that had been too easy. He quickly shoved a hand into her partially-unzipped pack and started rummaging around.

The blonde girl was still staring at him, gobsmacked. Still, he suspected she'd find her voice.

In 3…2…1…

"You…you…" she gasped in outrage.

There it was. He suppressed an urge to roll his eyes, guessing he might be a little too prone to do that in this regeneration. Instead, he slapped on a sardonic grin.

"Me…me…" he mocked back at her. ""What, you think just 'cause you've traveled with me that I'd trust you hopping all around space and time?" He snorted. "Maybe you haven't heard about all my companions, but some of 'em I wouldn't trust with a houseplant. If anything, all that knowledge just makes you more dangerous."

"God, I'd forgotten what a complete git you are," she fumed. "A complete and utter git, King Git of all the gits of the Planet Gitroid, and when everything goes to hell and the universe implodes, I just want you to remember that it's all on account of your…gitfulness."

His lips twitched. She was actually a bit funny. "Gitfulness?" he asked, twisting the word around in his mouth experimentally as he ran his hands over the devices in her pack. There was something that felt like a Geiger counter, and ooh, was that a temporal displacement recorder? Out loud, he commented, "Don't think I've ever heard that one before."

"Yeah, and you never will again," she snapped. "What with the universe collapsing and all."

He couldn't help it—he rolled his eyes. "The universe isn't going to collapse," he assured her. Stretching out with senses that he'd spent so much time trying to dull, he could feel the rippling of the timeline. It seemed secure enough. Granted, there was a little something…odd about it. Some sort of strange twist and turn happening… And really, that was par for the course when he was around, but still…

It might be her. Time seemed to do strange things around her—all those bright little time signatures sprouting off of her. More to the point, she was right—normally speaking, while meeting a casual acquaintance out of order wouldn't necessarily be cause for alarm, getting entangled with the timelines of a companion? Different story, or at least, it should be. All that time for their timelines to run in parallel, all that causality twisting together…well, it was a potential disaster.

Odd, though, that it didn't feel that way. Even with the eddies and bumps, the timelines felt resilient, strong...purposeful, even. There was none of that creeping unease that generally accompanied potential paradoxes. He turned his attention to the girl again.

"How long do we travel together?" he enquired. She was young—maybe she just hadn't spent very much time with him. That could explain it. And she clearly wasn't with him anymore. He bit back a sigh. Another companion, run off to find…something better. For some reason, part of him wanted to add "a new pretty boy," and though he had no idea why, the idea of that annoyed him exceedingly. He shook his head to clear it—just a little timeline feedback, that.

She was shaking her head slowly, making her blond hair dance on her shoulders. "You know I can't tell you."

"But you left me." This came out sharper than he'd intended.

She shook her head again. "We were…separated," she answered hoarsely. "There was an accident. And all that," she said, gesturing toward the pack, "is how I'm supposed to find you again."

His arm holding her bag aloft sunk down a little. "Do I tell you to do this?" he asked, curious, gesturing toward her equipment with his other hand, which was still clutching the sonic screwdriver.

She took a deep breath. "S'complicated. Extremely, _extremely_ complicated and extremely important, and I can't tell you a thing about it."

The Doctor snorted. "Fate of the world, I'm sure," he muttered, digging into her pack again.

"No," she disagreed quietly. "Not the world."

His eyes snapped up. She was standing completely still, watching him, her expression grave.

As he stared into her eyes, he felt the timeline pulse.

Unable to resist, he opened his senses further than he had since the…well. It had been awhile. With effort, he lifted the lid of his temporal eye and peeked at the full form of all those little trace time signatures dancing around her. As he watched, they grew like vines, wrapping and weaving around her, and the causality filaments curled and spiraled about her in a glowing nimbus, blossoming into a thousand different possibilities. She started to glow like a sun, brighter and brighter, more and more ley lines of temporal power joining the multitude, spinning around her until—

With a startled breath, he closed off his senses.

She was just a young, blonde girl again. But looks could be deceiving.

"Who the hell are you?" he asked, mystified.

"Your friend," she answered. "Really, Doctor." She took a step closer to him, placed a hand over his chest, and he shivered a little at the contact. "I'm your friend, and I'm doing what has to be done. Please, just trust me."

"But I can't just let you swan off with all this," he protested, even though part of him was wavering. "Whatever you've got in here's powerful enough to cause a great ripple in space/time."

He fumbled in her bag and pulled out, at random, the NURF. Its electro-galvanic covering registered contact with skin, and it trilled out three little happy notes—ping, ping, ping!—in a welcoming response. The Doctor eyed it with distaste. "And I know _I_ didn't build this thing." He poked at it. "What the hell is it, anyway? Bit of a stupid design."

For some reason, this seemed to amuse her to no end. "Yeah," she agreed between snickers. "It's a bit stupid."

He dropped her bag to the floor to free up his hand and then adjusted the settings on the sonic screwdriver.

"No!" she cried suddenly, and with a wrench, she snatched the NURF from his hands. "You can't, Doctor. You just…can't. There's too much at stake." She ducked down and grabbed her bag.

"Funny thing," he commented, eyes on his screwdriver, still searching for the right setting, "I don't actually have to be holding your tech to scan it."

She glared at him and then, in a lightening quick move, she reached up and pinched him on the arm holding the sonic. Hard.

"Ow!" he yelped, flinching. His hand went slack, and she snatched the screwdriver away from him. "Bloody hell!"

She rolled her eyes. "Oh, don't be such a baby," she muttered, tucking the NURF back into her pack.

"If you wanted to hold the screwdriver," the Doctor muttered sulkily, rubbing his arm, "all you had to do was ask."

She rolled her eyes again.

"Right," he snapped. "So that's how it's going to be, eh? Fine." He crossed his arms, just a little gingerly. "I was going to ask you back to the TARDIS to talk, but we'll just talk in the lift instead." He leaned back against the wall. "Now, I'm going to hazard a guess and say you didn't build all that—" he gestured to her pack, "—yourself. That means you're working with someone, probably a team of someones." He raised an eyebrow. "So who might that be?"

She shook her head, ignoring his question. "I just want you to know, when I find you in your right time line, I am so gonna smack you for this."

"You said we'd been separated," he continued, likewise ignoring her threat. "And—if you're telling the truth—that means something major had to have happened, because otherwise I could just come find you. What was it?" He raised an eyebrow at her. "Or are you lying?"

"I'm not talking about this," she said furiously.

"You don't exactly have anywhere to go," he said, smirking a little. "Now, I'll agree to block my memories—so long as what you say is the truth—so you might as well go on and tell me everything. 'Sides, I don't plan on letting you out until I have some answers."

She snorted and started adjusting the sonic. "Please. I'm going to find the right setting to move the lift, and then we're gonna go our separate ways."

His lips twisted to one side. "Good luck with that."

She ignored him and kept fiddling with it.

He noticed, with some alarm, that she was actually getting close to the right setting. "I could have that off you, you know—" But before he could finish that sentence, the lift gave a massive lurch. Then, with a loud _thunk_, it started to move.

They stared at each other.

"Did you—" he started, eying the screwdriver.

"No," she answered. "I didn't do anything." Twisting around to face the doors, she saw that the floor numbers were decreasing. "We're going down."

"They must have overridden the emergency stop mechanism," the Doctor murmured, staring up at the floor indicator panel. "But I scrambled the bypass circuitry. They shouldn't have been able to fix it this fast."

"Can you stop it again?" she asked. "I don't want to find out what sort of reception might be waiting for us on the bottom floor."

The Doctor shook his head. "They must have some sort of master override," he said, surprise evident in his voice. "I can't stop it from here."

"Look," said she quickly. "No more games. We need to work together and get out of here, 'cause I really don't feel like being arrested today."

"What did you have in mind?" He could think of a couple different ways they could escape, but he was interested to see what she would say.

"Here." She thrust the sonic into his hand. "Open the doors. We'll jump out at the next open floor. But then, Doctor?" She looked at him seriously. "You let me go."

He stared at her as the seconds ticked by and the lift kept descending.

"C'mon, Doctor," she pleaded. "You used to trust me. You _will_ trust me, and it'll be fantastic, the very best. Better with two, I promise! Just…please…"

He knew he shouldn't, but…taking a deep breath, he gave a quick nod and pointed the sonic at the lift panel. The doors smoothly slid open, and they could see the floors passing by fairly quickly. A couple of people who were clearly waiting for the lift stared at them in confusion as they passed by.

"Ok," said the Doctor, "on my count, we jump."

"Right," she agreed, tightening her grip on her bag.

The Doctor was busy calculating the timing necessary to exit the lift and so didn't notice when she stretched out her free hand until she tucked it into his own. Surprised, he glanced down at their joined hands with a bemused expression. Judging by the look of concentration on her face, she didn't even realize what she'd done.

The next floor slid into view—grey carpets, filing cabinets, and a ficus tree. It was also blessedly empty.

"Alright," said the Doctor. "Three, two, one…jump!" He leapt forward out of the fast-moving lift, pulling the girl along in his wake. They tumbled forward onto the grey carpet.

She was laughing even before she sat up. "Oh, I've missed that," she said, struggling to her feet and bumping her shoulder into his as he stood. "Even if it's just hopping off a lift and not off some alien waterfall or a helicopter or that one time when we slid down into that wet clay pit on…what was it? Muddy something or other…"

The Doctor tilted his head, considering. "Mautdii 6?"

"Yes!" She smacked his arm lightly. "That's the one."

She was grinning at him and it was infectious. His smile was rusty from disuse, but it still made her light up all the more. She was still holding his hand, he noticed.

The contact was…nice.

She slung her pack over her shoulder with her free hand, keeping a tight grip on the broken strap. "So, where did you park the TARDIS?"

"Why?" he asked, eyebrow quirked. "Did you change your mind about that chat?" Trying not to sound too hopeful, he added, "We could get a bite to eat."

She pressed her lips together, and for one strange moment, he wondered if she was going to cry. But then, she just shook her head and smiled. "Wish I could, but no. We should both get out of here, though. I think they'll have noticed something's up when the empty, open lift gets to the bottom floor."

He nodded. "I'm parked about two floors up from where I ran into you. We should probably avoid the lifts, though. I came down a flight of stairs in the north corner of the building."

"Right then," she said, her face determined. "Probably best if we split up." But she seemed reluctant to let go of his hand. "You head off that way, and I'll go the other—there's bound to be more than one flight of stairs in a building this big."

"Right," he agreed.

"Well, then," she said, softer now. She was staring down at their joined hands. "We should probably say goodbye."

"Will you at least tell me your name?" When her eyes snapped up to meet his, he almost regretted asking—her expression was so bleak.

"I can't," she whispered. "I shouldn't even be here. Just…forget this. Please."

He sighed. "Alright."

She smiled and squeezed his hand once before letting go. "Bye, then, Doctor." She stared up at him for a moment, biting her lip. Then she leaned up, pressed a quick, surprising kiss to his cheek, and turned away. A half-moment later, and she was around a corner, out of sight.

Right.

Well, then.

That was that.

With a sigh, the Doctor turned and started to hunt for the stairs.

Rose wiped a quick, traitorous tear away as she hurried through the office building. This just wasn't fair—getting him back and then losing him all over again. And who knew how long it would be before she saw him again.

There were so many things she wished she could have said to him. So many stories she could have told. She could picture him, sitting in the galley kitchen with his old blue mug, laughing uproariously as she told him her tale of woe—when she'd had to go straight from one of the Vitex corporate parties to stop an alien invasion, which she did by hurling her ridiculously high heeled shoes into the delicate inner workings of an oxygen-compensation unit of a Corbuscian atmospheric interface module.

She weaved her way through the rows of cubicles, hardly looking where she was going and ignoring the curious looks of the office workers.

…Or she could tell him how she'd had to buy cases and cases of lamb meat paste baby food from the Tesco for this one orphaned Klrtisk hatchling, only to be caught at the door of the market by the paparazzi, and thus had accidentally started a bizarre (and disgusting) new diet fad.

And there—that ridiculous stuffed pink rabbit. She stopped by one of the desks where the offending bunny sat, its ears protruding over the cubicle wall. Janice from accounting always kept this bloody thing at her desk, and Rose was forever staring at it every time she had to file expense reports, reminded of how she and the Doctor had gone to Oestra Buuni to see the giant pink rabbit people, and the Doctor had spun that crazy story about his role in the creation of Easter chocolates, which allegedly involved a ravenous alien loose in the Cadbury's factory and a pit trap covered with plastic Easter grass, and it had been absolutely hilarious, but Rose could never say anything about it to Janice because—

Wait.

What?

She blinked and picked up the stuffed toy. What was it doing here?

She hadn't… Quickly, she leaned over and checked her dimensional jump remote. It was fully charged, ready to go, but she hadn't activated it.

She was still in the Doctor's universe.

A little unnerved, she set it back down on the desk. _Ok, so they have them here, too. Not really that surprising…_

She started moving again, headed for the door, pausing automatically to allow someone else to come through—

Oh.

Someone that she recognized.

She froze.

Joe.

That was Joe. Sandy-brown haired, average height, kept-offering-to-take-her-out-for-coffee Joe Anderson.

Her heart skipped a beat.

Joe Anderson, who nobody ever really looked at twice, but who was great with numbers, so he was one of the few old-regime holdover employees at…

_Torchwood_.

Her mind raced. The master override on the elevator controls. That oddly familiar view of the London skyline. That horrible stuffed rabbit. Alterna-Joe, surreptitiously checking out her bum as he walked passed, and…

Oh, god, the Doctor.

Rose turned around and _ran_.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Well, this has been a week of dizzying highs and terrifying lows, but not much with the creamy middles that are so conducive to writing. Hopefully things should even out for the next week or so. **

The Doctor was halfway up his second flight of stairs when he heard pounding footsteps echoing up the stairwell below him. Leaning over the railing, he saw _her_.

"Oh, it's you," he said, trying not to sound too pleased. "You change your mind?"

She didn't answer, just kept charging up the stairs and muttering under her breath.

The smile edging around the outside of his mouth faded away, and he gripped the railing, leaning over farther to see if she was being chased by anything. Nope, nothing that he could see, but she was still making impressive time up the stairs. As she got closer, he realized that she was spewing forth quite a creative variety of swear words. In a number of alien languages, no less.

"What's wrong?" he demanded as she reached him. She didn't answer, just grabbed his arm and pulled him up the rest of the stairs to the next landing.

"Problem," she gasped, letting go of him so that she could lean forward with her hands on her knees to catch her breath. "Big problem." She didn't rest for long, though—a few moments later, she leaned over the stairwell railing, looking up and down the levels and then tilting her head to listen.

"Nobody coming. That's good. Didn't see any cameras," she muttered. "But that doesn't mean there aren't any." She whipped back around and pinned him with her eyes. "The TARDIS is on which floor, did you say?"

"Er…" He thought about it for a moment. "Thirty-eighth, I think."

She drummed her fingers on the edge of the railing. "I think that might be the hardcopy case file archives. Hmm."

"Yeah, lots of filing cabinets," he confirmed.

"Maybe we should just try for it." She looked up the stairwell again, chewing on her lower lip. "But if they have us on security cameras…if they decide to check the footage when they find the empty lift…" She growled in frustration. "Why did it have to be here, of all places? Ugh—I need to think this through."

She turned back to the landing door, cracked it open, and peeked out. "No good. Human resources, I think, and they notice every damn thing. Bloody hell." She raked her fingers through her hair with her free hand and took a deep breath. "C'mon." She started up the next flight of stairs, still gripping his arm.

"Now, wait a moment. Tell me what's going on," he demanded, even as he followed her up, pulled along less by the strength of her grip than by the fear in her eyes.

"No time," she said. "Keep moving." At the next level, she looked out the door again. On the other side, they could both hear the ringing of phones. "Ah, ok, I think this is the in-house Citizen Liaison office. They have to spend all their time answering the public's crazy phone calls, so they're all practically dead inside. They won't notice us." She gave him a nervous grin. "Just, um, walk about as though you own the place."

Before he could answer that with a Look-with-a-capital-L, she dragged him through the door and into a large, open office space jam-packed with cubicles. None of the poor souls talking on their little black headsets so much as raised an eyebrow at them as they walked passed. The Doctor had just started to wonder if he should be investigating possible alien involvement in the workers' apathy when they reached the far side of the room, and she pulled him out into a hallway.

"Ok, there's gotta be something around here," she muttered, glancing nervously around. She led them down a little side corridor lined with windowless doors. Letting go of the Doctor, she tugged on the first door—locked. The second one was a cupboard filled with office supplies. "No, this won't work," she moaned. "Someone's bound to come looking for staples or something." The third door opened to a janitor's supply cupboard, packed with boxes of industrial strength cleaner. She shoved it closed in impatience. "Not enough room for both of us. We need somewhere to duck out of sight."

Behind her, the Doctor pulled out the sonic screwdriver and aimed it at the locked door. "How about in here?" He opened the door and revealed a little room, not much bigger than the other two cupboards, but there was enough space for both of them. Against one wall, there were a bunch of file boxes, stacked on top of one another. There was also an old desk with one broken leg, shoved haphazardly into the back corner. "Looks like long-term storage—a junk room."

She joined him at the entrance and took a look. "Perfect," she announced and gave him a little shove inside.

"Oi, d'you mind?" he groused, rolling his eyes even as he stepped inside, before closing the door and locking it again. With a fumbling hand, he located the light switch.

"Alright," he said, leaning back against one wall. "Let's hear what this is all about. Why are we hiding out in here?"

She was pacing back and forth in the limited space. "Oh, god, I didn't realize. I almost never come to the Administrative part of the building, and there were all those renovations that Pete did, and besides, for some reason the paint color's all different. What the hell are we going to do now?"

He crossed his arms. "What are we going to do about what?" Paint color, indeed. He was starting to seriously question her sanity.

She pulled at her hair. "God, I can't even tell you," she groaned. "This is so wrong." She took a long, slow breath in through clenched teeth and let it out again, leaning back against the wall. "Yeah… This is bad. I'm Rose, by the way."

He blinked in surprise. "Nice to meet you, Rose."

"Run for your life," she muttered.

"What?"

"Nothing." She started pacing again.

Yep, her sanity was definitely in question. "And you're telling me your name all of a sudden because…?"

"'Cause this is a great big mess, and you're gonna need something to call me other than "hey you." Honestly, right now, it's the least of our problems." She stopped and bit her lip. "Maybe we should just try for the TARDIS. If they haven't found it, they might not be able to identify you. They'd still have my face, though, so maybe they could track me down, and that could mess with the timelines…"

The Doctor dug deep into his stores of patience. "Look, clearly this is all getting a bit complicated, so why don't you tell me what's going on?"

Rose ignored him and chewed on a thumbnail absently as she mulled over the possibilities. If Torchwood identified either one of them, it could have catastrophic effects on the timeline. And if the Doctor found out what Torchwood was up to, she seriously doubted if he'd be willing to walk away, especially if he found the breach in time and space and the Void Ship… She stopped suddenly and looked up. "We don't even know what year it is. Maybe it's afterwards…"

The Doctor could almost see the wheels turning in her head, but it was still a bit of a surprise when she held out her hand and said, "Sonic."

"What?"

"Give me the sonic," she insisted.

"No," he said, nonplussed. What, did she think he just went around handing it out?

Rose stared at him. "What happened to 'if you want it, just ask'?"

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "That was sarcasm."

"Yeah, well, give it here," she pushed, still holding out her hand. "I want to go check the date. I'll go ask one of the phone operators, and you can wait here."

"Well, tough." He crossed his arms and gave her a pointed stare. "You're not getting out without giving me some answers first. Like why we're hiding in a cupboard, for starters."

She groaned. "I can't tell you that."

"Well, then." He tucked his hands in his pockets and leaned back with an air of utter complaisance. "I guess we'll just have to make ourselves comfortable."

Rose let out a frustrated noise. "Why do you have to be so bloody stubborn?" Just because she'd been planning on locking him in the cupboard… Honestly, it wasn't like HE knew that.

The Doctor tipped his head to one side. "I'm sorry; didn't you say we'd met before?" He pasted on a fake smile and held out a hand for her to shake. "I'm the Doctor. Nice to meet you."

"Gah!" she shouted, throwing up her arms. "Fine! Fine. Of course. You want a bloody explanation. Can't just listen to me. Can't trust that maybe, just this once, I know best. Oh, no, not the Doctor. You've gotta go jumping into deep, dark pits or trusting that just 'cause you show someone the Spock sign, they won't trap you in a holding pen of ionic energy. Or," she said, jabbing a finger in his direction, "letting aliens walk around inside dead people. And then, when it all goes wrong, it's, 'Oh, whoops, Rose, look at that—zombies loose in Cardiff.'"

"Is this going somewhere?" he interrupted.

Rose threw herself against the wall with a sigh. "Fine. Screw the timelines, anyway. This," she said with a wave of her hand, "is Torchwood. They're sorta like UNIT but without all the fuzzy happy Doctor-love. We run into them later on in your timeline and…and sort them out. So we can't get caught by them now."

"Is that all?" he said, reaching into his coat pocket. "Relax." He pulled out his psychic paper. "We'll just tell them whatever they want to hear. Perfect aliases."

"But you can't use psychic paper here," she said, grimacing in at the memory. "Otherwise," she tugged something out of her pocket, "I'd use it too." She held aloft the exact same piece of psychic paper, several years older.

"You took my psychic paper?" He was shocked.

She was pressing it to her chest like it was a precious possession. "I had it on my when we got separated."

"But I love my psychic paper!" He felt a pang for his future self—how was he going to get on without it?

Rose rolled her eyes. "Oh, come on. You'll just get some more, or make it or whatever. It's not like it's the only one in the universe."

He was sulking. "But it's in that perfect little carrying case. Looks all official."

"Doctor." She pressed her lips together like she was trying to measure her words carefully. "Let's put it this way—if, when I'm able to get back to the proper version of you, you're happier to see the psychic paper than you are to see me?" She just shook her head as she tucked it back into her pocket.

Apparently, the consequences would be too dire to name.

"Anyway," she continued, "like I was saying, you can't use the psychic paper here. The employees get basic psychic training—they'll spot it as a fake."

He frowned. "Basic psychic training… What the hell is this place?"

"Like I said, Torchwood. And we _really _shouldn't be here." Then she paused. "_You_ really shouldn't be here." And then, cocking her head to one side, she asked, "Why are you here, anyway?"

Was she dense? Honestly… "I'm here because of you. Obviously," he added with yet another eye roll. "I was here on Earth, trying to track down an alien, stop a potential invasion. I was doing a scan, trying to locate their transmitter, when I saw the great blip in space/time that you made. I traced it back here and found you. And what kind of time travel device are you using, anyway? A standard vortex manipulator wouldn't make a spike that big."

She was clearly ignoring his question. "So I brought you here. That means that this wasn't supposed to happen." She drummed her fingers nervously.

He started to open his mouth to deliver an extremely fascinating and educational lecture on causality, when she suddenly whipped around and grabbed him by the front of his jacket.

"Wait," she gasped. "Did you say…transmitter?"

He nodded wordlessly.

"What aliens?" she demanded, shaking him a little. "Doctor, what aliens were you tracking down?"

"The Autons," he said, irritated. He pushed her hands off his coat. "Been awhile since I saw them last."

She swallowed, her eyes huge. "…and the Autons…they would be…?"

"Living plastic," he said succinctly. "Living plastic creatures."

Her mouth popped open in a little round O. He had a moment to think that flabbergasted was actually a pretty cute look on her before the profanity started.

And he'd thought her cursing was creative before…


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: So sorry this took so long... Next chapter might take while, too, unfortunately. But I'm still working on it!**

"Ok," said Rose, taking a deep breath to try to slow her hammering heart. "Ok." She had a few more colorful phrases on the tip of her tongue—swearing in alien languages had become quite the fad among Alternate-Torchwood's field agents, and she was definitely the best at it—but the Doctor was already looking a little shocked, so she just blew out a breath instead. "Right. Well, then. Existing was fun. I liked existing. Shame it's not going to last."

She sunk awkwardly onto the wobbly desk and tried not to think about what might happen, causality-wise, if her younger self was killed by a plastic dummy because the Doctor was stuck here in Torchwood with her.

The pressure of a hand on her shoulder interrupted her morbid thoughts.

"Alright, so what's all this about?" asked the Doctor. "And do me a favor—don't make me drag it out of you this time."

She gave a half-laugh. "No, I won't. Not really any point to it now, anyway." She leaned back a little, and the desk rocked precariously. "So…there's good news and bad news. The good news is that I know where the transmitter is. And the relay device. And what you're supposed to be doing."

"And the bad news?"

"Yeah…" She rubbed the heel of her hand over her forehead. "The bad news is that you're supposed to be saving my life right now. Younger-me, that is. But instead, you're stuck in here with me-me. On top of that, Torchwood probably has us both on security footage, and that's…not good. Really not good. In other words, I'm pretty sure I just detonated a nuclear bomb on both our timelines."

The Doctor started to speak, but Rose was already pushing up off the desk, pacing back and forth in the small space. She had made a mess of their timelines, so it was her job to fix it and by god, that's just what she was going to do.

"Ok, no use sitting around here whinging," she decided. "And no waiting around for Reapers. Priorities. It's about one o'clock by now. We've got to make sure you get to Henrik's by, ooh…" She scrunched up her face thoughtfully, "Eight o'clock, I think. Maybe a few minutes sooner. Better aim for a quarter till. Or sooner. Would sooner be better, do you think?" She glanced at him for confirmation, but before he had a chance to answer, she was off again.

"Say seven-thirty, then, just to be on the safe side. In the mean time, we've got to make sure that Torchwood won't be able to track us down. Might have to go erase their camera footage, which means we'll have to find their central security office. And we have to do it without getting caught and without letting them find the TARDIS. And if they've already viewed the footage, we might need to ret-con some people…" She trailed off, looking thoughtful. "I don't actually have any on me, though."

The Doctor started to ask what the hell ret-conning was, but she was already talking.

"Well, we'll figure something out. And we also can't them know that you're the Doctor," she added firmly. "That's critical. Oh, and you'll have to erase your memory of me before you get to Henrik's." She drummed her fingers against the side of her leg nervously. "Does that take very long?"

He waited a beat before answering, just to see if she'd interrupt again. "You've got a bit of a gob, did you know?"

Rose blinked in surprise and her mouth popped open. "Seriously? You're going to say that? To me? _You_?"

He smirked a little. "If the shoe fits…"

She still looked a little taken aback. Yep, he thought. Flabbergasted was definitely a cute look on her.

He clapped his hands together decisively. "Alright, here's the plan. We forget about the security footage, you stop dragging us into cupboards, and we head for the TARDIS. One quick jump across London, and I can save younger-you and stop an alien invasion, and you can be on your way. Sound good?" He started rummaging in his pocket for the sonic.

"But what about the security footage?" she protested.

"Irrelevant." He pulled out the sonic and started adjusting it.

"But Doctor, Torchwood will have our faces." Rose pushed him aside and leaned against the door to stop him. "They'll be able to track us down."

"No, they won't," he said, unsuccessfully trying to nudge her out of the way. "If we are actually on any security tapes AND if they happen to check them, they'll just see a man and a woman. It's not like we're wearing name tags."

Rose rubbed her eyes, trying to reason it out. "But then what if they identify us later?"

He tilted his head to one side with a little smile. "I think you might be over-thinking this. If they figure out our names at a later point, then they might—MIGHT—realize that we were in their building today, but it will be too late to do anything about it." He grabbed her by the shoulders and shifted her to the side. "And if that's the case, then they'll have learned our identities through some other means, unrelated to this particular set of events."

"But…but…what if they already know we're here? What if they have the TARDIS surrounded?" she argued. "They have soldiers, Doctor. With guns."

He paused and looked at her. "If that's the case, how would wiping the security footage help?"

Rose stared back at him. "I guess…it wouldn't."

"You see?" He clapped her on the shoulder. "Nice and simple. We'll just head up the stairs and be on our way."

"But…but…Torchwood…"

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Right, Torchwood. D'you know how many evil organizations I've dealt with over the years?" Without giving her a chance to answer, he unlocked the door. "Trust me, we'll be alright. And the quicker we're out, the better."

Rose mulled it over. "You're right," she said, slightly abashed. "Sorry, I just…" But she couldn't really explain to him the panic that had bubbled up in her when she'd realized where they were, at least, not without further compromising the timelines.

_Torchwood tore us apart. The Slitheen couldn't do it, the Cybermen couldn't do it, not even the Daleks could do it, but Torchwood did. I've been trapped in a parallel universe for years because of this godforsaken place._

But of course, she couldn't tell him that, so she just muttered, "Sorry," with an embarrassed flush on her cheeks.

"It's alright," said the Doctor easily. "Ready?"

She nodded. "Yeah. But wait, one thing first: You can't tell anybody that you're the Doctor."

"Who would I tell?" he asked, a bit exasperated.

"Really, though, you can't," she said firmly. "I mean it. No matter what. You're actually _in_ the Torchwood Charter. By name. Enemy of the Crown—standing order to capture." She grimaced. "I'm not, though. At least, I don't think so. Bit insulting, that. Anyway," she said, shaking her head, "point is, you need an alias just in case we get caught."

"John Smith," he readily supplied.

"What? No." She rolled her eyes and shook her head. "Honestly, John Smith? Doctor, these are smart people. You can't go using something as obvious as John Smith. Besides, they have files of information on you—John Smith is probably in there somewhere. You'll need something else."

She was mulling it over when a wicked little thought occurred. "Hmm…how about Mickey?" she suggested innocently, hiding a grin. "Mickey Smith."

That'd teach him to say she was the one with a gob. If she actually managed to get back to Pete's World, Mickey was going to die for laughing.

"S'pose," said the Doctor gruffly. "Sounds a bit daft, though."

"Not a bit of it," said Rose firmly, grabbing her shoulder pack off the floor and slinging it across her back. "Sounds very brave. Well, c'mon, Mickey," she waggled her eyebrows, "let's go."

The hallway was clear, for which Rose was grateful. She knew they'd run into someone eventually, but the longer they could stay out of sight, the better. Taking a moment to get her bearings, she decided to head toward the North staircase rather than double-back, just in case anyone was on their trail.

It was a both a familiar and surreal feeling, walking through dangerous territory with the Doctor—wrong Doctor for one, and she wasn't used to feeling like she should be the one protecting him. She had to keep fighting the urge to grab hold of his hand, figuring it would just invite unwanted attention, the two of them strolling about hand in hand.

Funny that it had never really occurred to her before.

They made their way quickly down the winding hallways, getting only the occasional odd look from an assortment of office workers. Once they found one of the central corridors, the Doctor spotted a sign indicating the direction of the stairwell.

"There we are. We get ourselves up to Floor 38, and we're laughing," he said.

"Clear the hall," called a loud voice from down the central corridor. "Sensitive equipment coming through. Clear the hall." Two soldiers were directing people out of the way as a group of Torchwood personnel carefully moved a large, alien-looking machine using a black stabilizer platform, which was beeping softly. Behind them followed a technician in a white lab coat holding some sort of monitoring equipment. He was staring at his data screen intently.

Rose and the Doctor drew back into a side hallway.

"Alright, once they're passed, we'll head for the stairs," murmured Rose, watching the procession warily.

"Hang on," he whispered, grabbing her arm and pulling her closer. "That's the particle accelerator engine from a Paxtril C-class short range cruiser." He stared at the alien technology as the technicians wheeled it past. "How did they manage to get their hands on that?"

He was standing behind her, pressing forward against her back, and Rose tried to brace herself against him, worried that he would try to approach the group and start asking questions. "This is what they do," she whispered back furiously. "Torchwood gathers all alien tech that falls to Earth. They reverse-engineer it and put it to use."

"They're going to end up blowing half the world apart if they start poking around with that," he growled, still gripping her arm. "Stupid apes, playing with something they know nothing about. Idiots, all of them."

"Hey, that's my species you're talking about," Rose muttered, slightly annoyed because she agreed with him—Torchwood, _this_ Torchwood, was terrible—but at the same time, he didn't understand. He had never stood looking up at the Sycorax ship, every building ringed with people waiting to jump, and felt utterly helpless.

The Doctor has never felt _Doctorless._

"Your species is made up of nothing but children," he snapped, his voice livid. "Greedy children, always wanting what they can't have."

Ok, that was officially over the line. Rose thought of the parallel Torchwood field agents—people she had _known_, who were _friends_, and even a few who'd been under her command—who had paid the ultimate price in defense of the Earth, and she turned to meet his glare head-on. "Is that so?" she asked in a deadly calm. "Greedy children, the lot of us?" When he didn't answer, just kept glaring, she added quietly, "And just how many of those children have given their lives to save yours, Doctor?"

She regretted it the moment it left her lips, and she watched the shaft strike home—the Doctor's guilt would forever be a weak spot. His blue eyes that had been so fierce a moment ago suddenly looked lost.

Rose opened her mouth to say something—sorry, forget it, I didn't mean it—but nothing came out. They just looked into each other's eyes for a moment, before Rose broke the contact and turned away.

"Looks like they're taking it upstairs," she whispered, relieved, as the group of researchers began negotiating the stabilizer platform onto a large service elevator. Hopefully, the Doctor would just let it go. The last thing she wanted to do right now was go hunting down every piece of alien gear that Torchwood was hoarding. "No good worrying about it now. We'd have to search the whole place to find it—"

She was interrupted by a whir of the sonic right by her right ear. "What the hell are you doing?" she hissed at him. Across the hall, a small set of yellow lights on the Paxtril engine blinked three times and then stopped.

"Activating one of the engine's minor systems—just a little thing, sort of like the system that checks the oil levels on a car," he whispered back. "This lot won't notice anything, but, now that it's on, I'll be able to track where they're taking it with this." He flipped the sonic once in his agile fingers.

Just then, the Torchwood researcher who was carrying the monitoring equipment called for the rest of the group to halt. He was frowning at his data screen.

Rose turned and craned her head to glare up at the Doctor. "Really? 'Cause that looks like noticing to me."


	6. Chapter 6

He moved his hand from her arm to her shoulder and squeezed. "Relax," he breathed into her ear, and Rose suppressed a shiver.

Oh, she had missed him so very much. It was really making it difficult for her to concentrate on what an arse he was being.

"Now that the activation signal has died down, they won't find anything," he continued, his lips still centimeters from her ear. "Watch."

The researcher with the data screen was running a scanner over the engine. He checked the results and then gave a quick nod to the rest of the team, who resumed moving the platform.

"You see? And now, we'll be able to find where they're taking it. If I can get access to it, I can permanently disable the dangerous bits, and then we'll be set."

"We don't have time for that," she insisted.

Across the hall, the Torchwood group had finally managed to maneuver the engine into the service lift. Once all everyone in the group was inside, the lift doors slid shut.

"Nah, don't be silly," said the Doctor. "We've hours yet. C'mon, let's find those stairs."

He was half-way to the stairwell before Rose caught up with him. "We can't do anything, though," she said, nearly trotting to match his long strides.

"Yes, we can. Won't take more than a mo' once I find the engine." He found the entrance to the stairs and started up them.

"But…" Rose growled in frustration and followed him up. "I told you before, you and me, we get Torchwood sorted later. If we do anything now, we'll interfere with the timelines. There'll be paradoxes, and—"

"No." The Doctor halted at the next landed and turned around to face her, irritation written all over his face. Rose stopped short.

"Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, I know what I'm doing?" he asked impatiently. "And that maybe, even though you're from my future, you don't?"

"Yes." She nearly shouted it, only remembering at the last minute the need to keep her voice down. "The fact that I don't know what I'm doing occurs to me every single day, thanks. Doesn't mean that I'm not right, though. And just because time's in flux or whatever doesn't mean that things can't go _a little bit wrong_."

She raked her fingers through her hair. "We can't go poking around through Torchwood's alien artifact collection. We just can't."

"Well, tough," he said bluntly. "Because I'm going to."

"Gah!" Rose spun around in frustration. "We don't have time for this," she growled and then, before she could stop herself, she uttered it—her very favorite bit of alien profanity.

_This_ version of him had shouted it at her once during a particularly heated argument (she couldn't remember what it had been about). Afterwards, she had repeated it to herself over and over in secret until she could say it, wanting to capture the lovely sound of his native language. She didn't actually know what it meant, but once she ended up in Pete's World, she had gotten into the habit of saying it when things got especially dicey, just because it was comforting to hear the ringing syllables of his words falling from her own lips.

The second she said it, though, she winced because the last thing that _this_ him needed was a reminder of his dead people. She turned back toward him to see how bad the damage was and to apologize.

The Doctor was staring at her, his eyebrows climbing halfway up his forehead and his mouth hanging open. He looked plenty shocked—and was that speculation?—but he didn't look particularly hurt.

"Yeah, sorry," he said after a brief moment, "but you're gonna have to at least buy me a drink first."

Rose blinked. "What?"

He pointed a finger at her sternly. "And that is definitely not what the TARDIS console is for! You just…keep off of it." He seemed to be…yes, he was actually blushing, just a little bit. "Now, let's get going."

After one last look at her and a little headshake, he started back up the stairs, leaving Rose in a cloud of confusion.

"Wait," she said, following in his wake up the stairs. "What was it that I said?"

"I'm not going to repeat it," he answered, face still red.

Rose opened her mouth to say something back at him, she wasn't sure what, when suddenly a PA system activated with a crackle of static.

"This is an official notice that today's Emergency Drill 10 will commence in fifteen minutes," said a woman's voice, cool and efficient. "Repeat, Emergency Drill 10 will commence in fifteen minutes. Thank you."

"No," said Rose, her face going pale. "No-no-no-no-no. That's code," she added when he looked at her quizzically. "The Emergency Drill is a security code." She wracked her brain, trying to remember what she had read from the parallel Torchwood's old security manual. "It means that employees are supposed to go to their designated work areas because they're gonna do a building-wide security sweep. I think." That was, if the current Torchwood's protocols were the same as the old ones from Pete's World, at least.

"They must know we're here. We need to get out of here _now_," she insisted, grabbing his arm and starting up the stairs.

Thankfully, the Doctor didn't object, or at least he'd decided to postpone the argument. As they hit the next landing, the sounds of footsteps and voices started to come up from the stairwell, several floors below.

"That's the sweep," puffed Rose. "They'll go up floor by floor. We should be OK if we just keep ahead of them—"

"Rose. Stop." The Doctor's voice was harsh as he pulled her to a halt, twisting around to look up the next flight of stairs. "There's something… Something's wrong."

"What is it?"

He shook his head. "Something's coming. We have to—"

One level above them, a door opened, and they could hear footsteps on the landing. Rose scrambled to find her footing as the Doctor practically dragged her back down the steps to the closest door. With shaking hands, he yanked it open and shoved her through.

"What is it?" she repeated as he grabbed her hand and ran down the hallway. She didn't know how to interpret this sudden burst of fear from him, but it was alarming, to say the least. "What're we running from? Where're we going?" When he didn't answer, she pulled back on his arm. "Slow down! It looks too suspicious with us running like this."

The Doctor slowed a little, but he seemed more concerned with escaping than remaining inconspicuous. "Does Torchwood employ aliens?" he asked suddenly. "Do they keep aliens here, at this facility?"

"I dunno," she answered truthfully. "Possibly. Why?"

He just shook his head and, glancing behind them over his shoulder, tried to open the first door. When it didn't open, he reached for his sonic.

"Don't," said Rose quickly, putting up a hand to stop him. "The sonic's too recognizable. Besides, the psychic paper will work on the door—it just needs a key-card." She nudged him over and fished it out from her pocket. One swipe of the psychic paper over the security monitor, and a green light came on above the handle of the door. Rose cautiously pushed it open and peeked inside.

Damn. One of Torchwood's alien artifact warehouses, and probably the last place she wanted to go with the Doctor right now. She definitely didn't need him getting all up in arms over another piece of misappropriated technology.

"Yeah, I don't know if this is the best place to hide," she hedged. "Maybe we should keep moving—"

But the Doctor was already pushing her inside, desperate to get away from whatever was following them. Once he was through the doorway, though, the sight of the enormous warehouse was enough to stop him in his tracks.

Row after row of industrial shelving filled the huge room, stacked high with crates packed with alien tech. There were lots of people working—sorting through the piles of tech, pulling out the odd bit to subject it to testing at one of the makeshift lab stations. A couple of forklift operators were moving crates to and from the storage shelves. Scattered around the room were clearings for larger pieces—alien spaceships and the like.

There were a few guards, but there was enough activity in the room that no one seemed to have noticed them yet. Rose pulled the somewhat gobsmacked Doctor to the side, behind a row of crates.

"We shouldn't be in here," she whispered. "How are we going to get upstairs now?"

The Doctor wasn't listening. "Those are parts from a Wraske transport ship. And there," he said, looking over the top of the crate and pointing toward one of the testing labs, "that looks like a pile of ionic transistors from a deep space scanner."

"Get down," hissed Rose, tugging at his jacket. "We're going to get spotted."

The Doctor gave one last look around the room before complying. "The human race shouldn't have all this stuff yet. How long have they been doing this? Collecting alien technology, I mean."

Rose thought about the unfortunate run-in with Queen Victoria. "Awhile." She peeked around the edge of a crate. "Is that a door there on the far wall?" She pursed her lips. "Maybe we can get to another staircase through there."

The Doctor seemed to have spotted something else, however. "Nah. I know how we can get out of here."

"How?"

He grabbed her hand. "Come with me." He pulled her through the rows of crates.

Rose followed behind him, weaving through the stacks and trying to stay unnoticed. "Where are we going?"

The Doctor didn't answer her, just tugged at her hand to make her keep up.

"I'm serious," she protested as quietly as she could. "What's your plan?" She ducked her head down to keep out of sight of a nearby guard. "Damn it, answer me," she hissed at him when he continued to ignore her. "Where exactly are we going?"

"Here." The Doctor stopped in front of a large, shiny black block, nearly ten feet by ten feet. It was virtually unmarked on the exterior except for one circle, like a hatch, about the size of a manhole cover, halfway up the side. The hatch was outlined with some sort of rubber piping.

He scanned the block with his sonic and then said, in a relieved voice, "Perfect."

"What is it?"

The Doctor ran his hand over the piping. "It's an escape pod. From a Traxilain ship." He rapped his knuckles against the hatch softly. "And it's intact. We can hide out in here."

"But Doctor," she whispered, glancing over her shoulder to make sure no one was watching them, "they'll search everywhere. Inside the escape pod, too."

He shook his head with a smile. "Nah. They can't open it."

"How do you know?"

"'Cause, like I said, the seal's still intact," he said, indicating the piping. "From what you've said about this lot, if they'd figured out how to get in, the seal would be broken."

Rose shook her head. "Sure, but even if we can hide in there, the sweep could take hours. And they'll find the TARDIS. We should keep moving, try to find a staircase."

The Doctor was prodding the skin of the pod next to the hatch. "Clever people, the Traxilains," he murmured. "They built their escape pods with short-range teleports on board for emergency exits." He grinned at her over his shoulder. "If it's still working, we'll be able to just pop on upstairs."

Rose grinned back at him automatically before that whole sentence fully registered. "Wait…IF it's working? What if it's not?"

"Then, lucky for us, I'm very clever. Should be able to fix it…" He made an adjustment to the sonic screwdriver. "Well, probably."

"And what if you can't?" she demanded. "We'd be stuck here—the sweep could take hours and hours! And besides, an unopened escape pod? It's probably filled with dead aliens. We should just keep moving."

The Doctor swung back around, clearly about to snap something back at her, when his face suddenly froze, and the hand holding the sonic quickly tucked it into one of his jacket pockets. With a sinking feeling, Rose turned around as well and saw a guard walking toward them up the row, weapon drawn. He was speaking into a communications device on his shoulder.

The Doctor and Rose both raised their hands reflexively.

"You two," the guard called, once he was done with his transmission. "Identify yourselves."

Rose considered and then quickly dismissed the possibility of running—there really wasn't anywhere for them to go but straight down the aisle, and even if they didn't get shot, by the time they reached a door, the guard would have called for a lock-down. Instead, she went with the Doctor standard back-up plan—bluffing, mixed with generous portions of flirting.

"Hello," she said with a bright smile. "Sorry, we've got a bit lost."

The guard didn't smile back. Behind him, Rose could see two more guards coming up the aisle. "Names," he demanded.

"Harriet Jones," answered Rose without missing a beat. It was a safe enough alibi in this here-and-now—Harriet wouldn't be getting her chance to step into the lime light for another year. "Field agent out of the Cardiff branch." _And please let there be a Torchwood office in Cardiff in this universe_, she thought. She nudged the Doctor with her elbow.

"Mickey Smith," he supplied with a nearly indiscernible sigh and a fairly convincing Welsh accent. "Same."

"Cardiff," said one of the other guards with a shake of his head. "Should have known. Nothing but bloody cowboys these days."

The first guard frowned. "What are you lot doing in here?"

Out of the corner of her eye, Rose could see the Doctor start to open his mouth. "We're both new," she supplied before he could speak. "Our C.O. brought us up for a tour of the head office and to see if we could get a bit of a talk from Roberts in the A.T.I. office. You know, give us some practice in alien tech identification?" She held up her bag. "We've got a couple of new acquisitions for him to review."

The guard nodded, the suspicion on his face easing a little, and Rose felt a wave of relief. Fortunately, her story seemed to be holding up so far—thank goodness for the similarities between parallel universes. "Sorry we're in here," she added with a disarming grin. "We got separated from our C.O. and then when we heard the security code alert, we weren't sure where to go—no work stations for us to report to. I don't s'pose you could point us back toward the East stairwell?"

But there, the luck seemed to run out. The guard shook his head. "Can't do that—nobody's supposed to be walking around until the sweep's come through. You two can come with me, and we'll get this sorted out." He paused for a moment. "You two have ID cards?"

Rose shook her head. "Nope. Like I said, we're both new. We're supposed to get them done during this visit, but we haven't had a chance to swing by the security office yet."

The guard frowned at that. "Well. Like I said, we'll get this sorted. Come with me."

He led them to the back of the warehouse and through a doorway into an adjoining office, with the other two guards bringing up the rear. Taking out a set of keys, he unlocked a heavy door leading into a small, mostly empty room and ushered them inside. "Have a seat," he said, indicating a couple of plastic chairs. "I have to keep you in holding until your I.D.s can be verified, but not to worry—I'll make a quick call down to the front security office and see if I can find your C.O."

"That would be very helpful," said the Doctor with a wan smile as he sat down.

"Yeah, thanks," added Rose as sincerely as she could. She tried her best to inconspicuously drop her shoulder bag underneath the chair.

The guard stepped out of the room. As the sound of the lock turning behind him filled the silence, both of their smiles dropped.

"Well, now what?" asked Rose bitingly. "This is a bloody mess! Why couldn't you just listen to me?"

"Me? You're the one who won't stop arguing." The Doctor folded his arms across his chest and glared at her.

"Oh, of all the gen shi'xwen nox tauw szhin…" she cursed, crossing her arms in turn.

"And that," said the Doctor, interrupting and shaking a finger at her. "Stop all that cursing. You're like a bloody sailor."

"Yeah, well, learned 'em all from you," she replied flippantly, tipping her head back to stare at the ceiling. _Well, and Jack,_ she silently amended.

"You did not." His ears were going red again.

"Yep," she said, popping the P, "I did." Of course, the finer points of her vocabulary had been largely the work of his next regeneration, the one with the gob, who'd loved all sorts of words…Rose shook her head, clearing away the memories. "Should we try to make a run for it, d'you think?"

The Doctor tilted his head, listening. "Not yet. The guards are still in the next room. We'll wait and see—if they leave, then we'll sonic open the door and try to get to that escape pod." He sighed. "Sounds like our friend is still on the phone."

"Bollocks," she muttered and then rolled her eyes when he scowled at her. "Sorry." Shifting in her chair, she turned to consider him. "So…what was it that I said back there? In the stairwell, I mean."

He clearly didn't want to answer that particular question. "If you don't know what it means, why would you go around saying it?"

Rose shrugged. "'Cause. You said it to me. In the middle of an argument. I didn't realize it was something…salacious." _What the hell_, she thought. The world was probably going to come to an end. Might as well flirt with the Doctor before it did. "So…" She leaned a little closer to him. "Just how bad was it?"

He stared at the floor. "Oh, it was nothing much. Just…instructions for an…inefficient use of the TARDIS console."

She snorted. "You're such a bad liar."

He opened his mouth to answer but then he suddenly tensed up and his face drained of color. "There it is again," he muttered. "Something's coming. Can you feel it?"

Rose shook her head. "I don't feel anything." She gripped the edge of her seat.

He jumped up to his feet. "There's something causing a disturbance in time; a moving fixed point drawing things in, twisting time in its wake." He met her eyes and then his gaze snapped to the door behind her. "Something terrible is coming."

Rose leapt to her feet and turned to face the door. "Alright," she said, leaning over to snatch her pack off the floor, "we do whatever we have to do to get past it, and then we run."

She yanked open her pack and pulled out a small weapon. "It's stun-only," she added, with a nervous glance at him.

The Doctor gave her a tight nod in reply. Just outside the door, they could hear the jingling of keys and the faint rattle of the bolt sliding free.

Rose grabbed the Doctor's hand with her free one and squeezed. His arm was rigid, but he squeezed back. She trained her stunner on the doorway.

The door swung open, revealing the figure of a man.

Rose felt her jaw drop along with her weapon. "Holy shit."

"You know," said Capt. Jack Harkness after a beat, "that's not really the reception I was hoping for."


	7. Chapter 7

Twenty-six minutes earlier, Jack had stood staring at the images of the Doctor and Rose on the security monitor.

It was them, _really_ them. Rose and the Doctor. The Doctor and Rose. Here, at Torchwood. Finally, it was them and more importantly, judging by Rose's appearance, it was them _after Satellite Five_.

They had come for him.

As he'd walked down the hallway in search of them, he had nervously adjusted the lapels of his coat and smoothed down his hair, his heart in his throat at the thought of seeing them again.

Riding in the elevator, his fists had clenched, nails biting into his palms. They'd left him behind, no questions asked. Hadn't even bothered to come back and bury his body. He'd had to wait more than a century for answers, and by god, he was going to get them.

Trekking through the long stretches of cubicles following their trail, he'd run through all the thoughts he'd used as comfort over the years: who knows what had happened—maybe there'd been an emergency, maybe they'd had to leave, maybe they'd never meant to leave him behind. And, more importantly, they were here now.

But they had taken their sweet time, he thought bitterly as he smacked his malfunctioning wrist unit, trying to get it to track the Doctor's unusual heart signature. He couldn't be sure, but based on Rose's face, it had been years for them, and that stung. Sure, he had fallen through the cracks, got stuck in the past—that was the unfortunate reality of time travel. What could be just minutes for one person could be a hundred years for another.

But what if it had really been years for them before they bothered to come and look for him?

Hiking back up a flight of stairs, he wondered what in the hell they were playing at, making him walk all over Torchwood like this. And they had managed to set off a security alert, which was going to make this all a bit trickier.

On the other hand… He grinned. It was so like the Doctor to be wandering around in the middle of an enemy stronghold without a plan.

Oh, he'd missed that.

And right about when his emotional pendulum was starting to swing back toward the negative, he'd received a page and was told that his two agents, Mickey Smith and Harriet Jones, were detained in Warehouse 15 and that he'd need to come collect them and verify their identities.

Mickey Smith, honestly. Were they…_trolling_ him? He wasn't sure whether that made this the universe's cruelest practical joke or the funniest.

It didn't matter, though—not really, anyway. They were here now, and the Doctor would be able to explain things to him, and everything would be ok. They had come for him.

He didn't doubt it for a minute until he opened the door to find Rose aiming a gun at him.

It was a surprisingly good look for her—all lean, competent authority with a dash of polish he didn't remember her having. And yeah, it had clearly been years for her. More importantly, she looked completely shocked to see him.

Which mean that they weren't here for him at all.

Worse, though, was the Doctor standing just behind her, glaring at him like he was an evil alien menace. The man he'd given his life for, back when sacrificing his life had actually meant something, was standing there looking at him like he was the bad guy.

"Jack." Rose interrupted his thoughts. Her mouth was hanging half-open, like she couldn't quite believe he was real. At least she'd lowered her weapon. "Jack."

Jack nodded tightly. "Agent..Jones."

"So can you verify," interrupted the guard from just behind him in the doorway, looking a little concerned at the obvious tension in the room, "that these are your two agents?"

Jack looked at them both—Rose with her wide eyes and the Doctor with his burning stare—and nodded. "Yeah. They're mine. Uh," he turned to glance at the man, "could you give us a minute? I need to talk to my agents about their habit of wandering off."

Once the guard had closed the door, Jack turned back around. "So…" he began.

But before he could think of what to say, Rose broke into a huge, delighted smile. "Oh my god, Jack!" she squealed as she leapt toward him.

Jack opened his arms automatically and caught her in swinging hug. "Hi, Rose." He blinked hard against the tears that were suddenly threatening, because no matter what, Rose was still Rose—the girl with the key to everybody's heart.

"I can't believe it's you," she exclaimed with a laugh. "The way the Doctor was talking, I'd thought something awful was about to come through the door."

"Well, I—" he started, but suddenly Rose was yanked from his arms.

"Don't touch her," snarled the Doctor. He dragged her back and pulled her behind him.

"Doctor," protested Rose, sounding shocked.

"I was just saying hello," said Jack, suddenly angry. "But I see things don't change much. So was that the problem? You needed more alone time?" Damn, he really hadn't meant to say that. He had dismissed that bitter little thought as ridiculous more than a hundred years ago, but apparently, it had refused to leave, skulking in the back of his mind and waiting for a chance to escape.

"Doctor, you don't understand," said Rose, pushing her way back in front of him. "This is Jack. He's a friend of ours."

"I don't know what that thing is," said the Doctor, brandishing the sonic screwdriver at Jack, "but it's not what you think it is."

"Thing. Oh, that's nice," snapped Jack.

"Jack, you don't understand," said Rose, hands up, trying to intercede between the two of them. "The Doctor's not—"

"Rose, listen to me," said the Doctor urgently. "Whatever that thing is, it's not human."

"Doc, it's me—" Jack started to say, but the words died on his tongue at the look on the Doctor's face. Whatever happened to him on Satellite Five, the Doctor could clearly sense it.

Was that why he had been left behind?

Rose looked back and forth between the two of them in hesitation, but Jack could already tell what would happen, could already see it in her eyes. He wasn't surprised when she lifted her weapon, aimed it at him again.

"What do you mean?" she asked the Doctor, never taking her eyes off of Jack. "What's wrong with him?"

"Nothing's wrong with me," Jack protested. "It's me, Rose. Doctor," he added, pleading.

"Everything," muttered the Doctor. "Everything's wrong with him."

Jack swallowed as Rose's face went hard, the rejection causing more damage to him than her gun ever could.

"Who are you?" she demanded. "Why are you doing this? Jack was my friend!"

"I am Jack," he insisted. "I promise you, it's me! C'mon, Rose, at least give me a chance to prove it."

She regarded him for a moment before nodding once. "Alright. Prove it." She didn't lower her weapon.

"We met in 1941. You were hanging from a barrage balloon in a Union Jack t-shirt. We danced to Glenn Miller on an invisible space ship." She didn't look convinced. "'Are you my mummy?'" he imitated, floundering.

"Told that story to a lot of people," she said levelly.

"Fine, then, something different." He thought and then snapped his fingers. "The last time I saw you on Satellite Fi—"

"No!" In a flash, Rose was in front of him, slapping a hand over his mouth. "Don't talk about that!"

"I told you that you were worth fighting for," said Jack, his words muffled by her palm. "Um, Rose, what's with the hand?"

She lowered it. "Jack." This time her smile was slower, warmer.

"Rose." The Doctor's voice was harsh. "He could be reading your mind, taking the details and twisting them."

She turned to him. "Well, you're the telepath. _Is_ he reading my mind?"

The Doctor paused. "No," he admitted. "Not that I can tell. But that doesn't mean that—"

"This is Jack," said Rose firmly. "He's our friend. I don't know what the problem is, but it's not him."

"I think I know what it is," said Jack grimly. "On Satellite Five—"

"No!" said Rose, interrupting him again. "Don't say anything about that. You don't understand, Jack." She twisted slightly, indicating the Doctor. "He isn't the Doctor from our timeline. I mean, it's too early in his timeline. He hasn't met us yet, not properly anyway."

"Oh, jeez, Rose," started Jack, because, wow, way to mess with causality.

"I know!" she nearly shouted. "Believe me, I know. It's a problem. It's one of many problems. But my point is, you can't say anything. About _anything_." She put special emphasis on that last bit, staring into his eyes like she was attempting a little telepathy herself.

"I've already told you," protested the Doctor. "I'll just block the memories."

"No," insisted Rose. "You know, Jack. _You know._ There are things we just can't tell him."

The Daleks. Ah. That was what she meant, what she was so desperately trying to protect the Doctor from knowing. At this point in his timeline, the Doctor still believed they had been eradicated from the universe. Jack remembered that moment of terror when they'd seen the fleet of Dalek ships on the monitors of Satellite Five. He remembered the single-minded ferocity, the _rage_ of the Doctor as he set about getting Rose back from them.

"Ok," he agreed, and he felt her relax against him. In some ways, it was reassuring—nothing had really changed. The Doctor would always protect Rose first and foremost, and Rose would always try to shield the Doctor.

"Well, that's just lovely," said the Doctor, and Jack recognized that tone. The Doctor was working up a good head of sarcasm. "We're all in agreement, then. There's just this one tiny little problem remaining." He waited until Rose turned to look at him over her shoulder. "Your friend's a walking temporal obscenity."

Rose scowled at the Doctor. "Would you stop being rude?" She turned back toward Jack, ignoring the Doctor's indignant snort. "What's he sensing, anyway?"

Jack shifted uncomfortably. She clearly had no idea what had happened to him, and he was unsure about how to break the news. Honestly, he wasn't sure if he should tell her at all—if the Doctor from her timeline had known what had happened to him but had kept it a secret from Rose…well, this had Doctor-protects-Rose-at-all-costs fingerprints all over it.

Jack hadn't spent more than a hundred years protecting the Doctor to let him down now.

Before he could think of what to say, Rose's eyes flew open and she grabbed his wrist.

"Could it be your vortex manipulator? Is it broken or something?" She flipped his hand over, inspecting the device.

"Well, yeah, actually," said Jack. "But—"

"Well, maybe that's it, then!" She turned back to face the Doctor. "Maybe his vortex manipulator is sending out weird signals or something. Could that be causing the problem?"

Over her shoulder, Jack silently pleaded with the Doctor to agree. As excuses went, it was probably the best he could do, but he could tell that the Doctor wasn't buying it. _For her sake_, he mouthed, his eyes flickering to Rose. _Please._

There was a tense moment during which Jack was certain the Doctor would object and demand answers. His blue eyes were boring holes into Jack, and damn, it was so hard to resist the urge to just tell him everything. But then, with a tilt of a blonde head and a soft word—_"Doctor?"—_the spell was broken. The Doctor's gaze shifted to Rose, and the storm passed.

"Yeah." His face softened, reflecting the smile Rose must have been giving him. "Maybe that's it."

It was a grudging offer of peace, but Jack was willing to take it. _Thank you_, he mouthed before Rose turned and grinned at him.

"I can't believe the three of us are here, together," she said with a half-laugh. "This is so weird."

"Definitely took me by surprise," said Jack with feeling.

Rose laughed. "I bet." Then she looked him over, considering. "What are you doing here, anyway?"


	8. Chapter 8

_Rose looked him over, considering. "What are you doing here, anyway?"_

Behind her, the Doctor snorted. "Didn't you hear what the guard said? He works here."

At that, Rose faltered. "You…you work for Torchwood?" The way she said the name, it was like it was something toxic, and Jack frowned, wondering what she knew about the organization.

"Yeah. Out of the Cardiff hub."

"Oh." She was silent for a moment, apparently replaying the last few minutes in her head. Then she said it again, this time with a half-laugh. "Oh. I see. You're the C.O. from Cardiff."

"Got it in one." Jack gave her a thousand watt grin. "Guess this was just your lucky day."

"Definitely," she agreed with feeling. "But how come you're working for Torchwood?"

"And what exactly is it that you do for them?" added the Doctor.

"After we got…separated," said Jack carefully, "I came looking for you two. I figured twenty-first century Cardiff was probably my best bet. Plus, like I said, my vortex manipulator went on the fritz. Torchwood offered me a job." It was a highly edited version, sure, but it was pretty close to the truth nonetheless. "Listen, I know that Torchwood One is…well, problematic. But mostly, we do good work—help protect the people from the aliens, and the aliens from the people."

The Doctor rolled his eyes, and even Rose looked skeptical.

"It's just…Torchwood…" she said, wincing a little. "They're a bit…"

"Evil?" said Jack unapologetically.

"Yeah, a little."

Jack nodded. "I know. But I'm doing my best to keep them in check. And you," he added, pointing at the Doctor, "ought to be grateful. They don't know it, but I've been keeping them off your back."

"What do you mean?" asked the Doctor.

"Torchwood has been hunting for you for a long time. Hell, you're even mentioned in the charter. What did you do to get on Queen Victoria's bad side, anyway?"

"Hasn't happened for him yet," muttered Rose.

"Ah." Jack shrugged. "Sorry. Anyway, I've been throwing them off your trail. Actually, that's why I'm here today—I wanted to get some new protocols installed in their surveillance parameters before…well, before you start making…um, frequent visits to twenty-first century London."

"It's ok—I've already told him that we're supposed to meet soon," said Rose with a wave of her hand. "Today, actually."

"What do you mean by 'frequent visits?'" asked the Doctor suspiciously.

"What do you mean, today?" asked Jack. "He's supposed to be meeting you _today_? For the first time?"

"Yeah, I believe I mentioned that our problems were many," said Rose, answering Jack and ignoring the Doctor. "We have to get him out of here and over to Henrik's by eight o'clock tonight or, well, you know. Bad stuff happens."

"Hmm, that gives us a little bit of time, at least," said Jack, checking his watch. "It's coming up on two o'clock now."

"I mean, I like the twenty-first century just fine," grumbled the Doctor. "But I don't see why there'd be any particular reason for frequent visits."

"Yeah, but the TARDIS is up on the 38th floor, and there's the security sweep to think about," replied Rose. "We need to get there before they do."

"That's true, but I might I have a solution for you," said Jack. "I've got a couple of ways to get around security—"

"Quick layovers, sure," interrupted the Doctor, continuing on his own tangent, "occasionally longer stops, maybe. It's an important time in Earth history. And London's a nice enough town. But frequent—"

"You take me back home to see my mum," said Rose, exasperated. "Now can we focus, please?"

"I do not," said the Doctor, aghast. "I will not."

"Yeah, you will," said Jack with a smirk. "Frequently."

"Not going to happen," said the Doctor firmly. "I don't do domestic."

"Rose, remember that time he helped you pick out slippers for your mom's birthday?" Jack's smile was a mile wide. "The fluffy pink ones?"

"What!" The Doctor's voice had pitched up an octave.

"You should have seen him at Christmas," said Rose to Jack, giving up the pretense of actually accomplishing anything. "Eating turkey with me and mum and Mickey. And he had this little paper crown on his head." She wiggled her fingers over her hairline to demonstrate. "You know, the kind that you get out of a Christmas cracker?"

"Oh, come on," scoffed the Doctor. "Now you're just making things up."

Her tongue curled over her front teeth. "I have pictures on my phone. Don't have it on me right now, but I'll be sure to bring it along next time."

The Doctor huffed and crossed his arms. Rose was giggling.

"So…" asked Jack, after a moment, "that would be Christmas after…"

Rose stopped laughing. "Um. Yeah," she admitted, suddenly uncomfortable. "Right after, actually."

"So…" Jack ran a hand over his mouth, trying to think of how to ask this. "Did you…did you ever think of me?"

"Of course!" Rose grasped his hand. "Thought about you a lot, actually. Hey," she added with a smile, squeezing his fingers, "I missed you."

"Then why…" He fumbled, because it was so hard, so much harder than he'd thought it would be, to talk about this without bitterness. "Why did you guys leave me? And why didn't you ever come back?" She might not know the real answer, but he had to ask.

"He…it was…" She trailed off, swallowed. "Look, Jack, it's complicated. After…after Satellite Five, he was injured. Badly. And he was…it was…" Her hand gestured ineffectually as she struggled to explain.

"You mean that's when I regenerate," said the Doctor, breaking the silence.

Rose whipped around to face him. "What? I never said that."

"Yeah, well, clever, me. And you aren't as good at keeping things secret as you'd like to think." When she just kept staring at him, the Doctor rolled his eyes. "You're looking for me, yes? And you instantly recognized me in the lift, so you know this face, but you also knew right away that I wasn't the version of me that you're looking for. Ergo, at some point during our acquaintance, I regenerate. New man, new face."

"Oh." Rose looked a bit sheepish. "Right. Well. So anyway, he was sick, and I did ask him about you, but he said you were working to rebuild the Earth. Then there was this huge alien invasion here—which hasn't actually happened yet, not for another two years, I think. Once everything was sort of back to normal, I wondered about you—I thought we might visit sometime. When I asked about it, he said that we ought to give you some time, and then some other things came up, and I asked again, but he always said…" She stopped, pieced it together. "Oh. He lied."

She turned and looked at the Doctor. "You lied." She ran a hand over her mouth. "I'm sorry, Jack."

"Yeah," he answered half-heartedly.

"I am," she insisted. "Look, I got separated from my Doctor, but I promise that when I get back to the right timeline, I will make him come find you. That is, if you haven't found him first. I promise, Jack."

She was gripping his fingers so tightly and looking up at him with such earnestness that he couldn't help but believe her. Rose Tyler, the girl with the key to everybody's heart. "Ok," he answered softly.

"How long has it been for you, anyway?" she asked, looking him over. "Can't have been too long. You don't really look any older."

"Yeah," he answered, just a little too quickly. "Not really that long." Before she could question him further, he cleared his voice and gave her a nice, distracting leer. "And what about you? It's been a couple of years, at least. Don't get me wrong," he added when she raised an eyebrow. "It looks good on you. Rose Tyler, all grown up." He lifted their joined hands and spun her around. "Love the all-black look, too. Nice boots. Very dominatrix."

"Oi," said Rose and the Doctor at the same time. Of course, Rose was mostly just saying it for show. She let go of Jack's hand with a roll of her eyes and a smile and grabbed her pack out from under one of the chairs.

The Doctor, on the other hand, looked moderately annoyed. "Do you mind not flirting with her?"

Jack started to fall into the old pattern, backing off with oh-I-was-just-kidding apology when he suddenly realized something. "Hey, wait a minute. I've known her longer than you." He shook a finger at the Doctor. "You don't get to be all possessive—you've only met her this afternoon. Maybe _I_ should ask _you_ to stop flirting with her."

Rose snorted and pulled her jacket out of her bag.

"I wasn't flirting with her," the Doctor protested indignantly.

"Right," said Jack, his voice heavy with sarcasm. "You just happened to be holding hands with her when I came in because...?"

"Yeah, maybe you both could shut it," said Rose without heat as she slid her jacket on. "Then we could actually get something done."

Jack gave her a mildly dirty grin. "Yes, ma'am."

"You're flirting again," said the Doctor, still annoyed.

"Ok," said Rose loudly. "That's enough of that. Here," she thrust her pack at the Doctor, "you see about fixing the strap on this thing. Jack, what do we need to do to get up to floor 38?"

"We'll just head for the stairs," he answered as the Doctor grumbled and ran the sonic over the broken strap. "And make sure we get there before the security sweep does. They've shut down the elevators, and they'll lock down the stairwells as they go, but we can still move upwards freely."

"Right," she said. "Then let's go. The sooner we get out of here, the better."

She reached for her newly repaired pack, but the Doctor held it out of reach. "Now wait a minute," he said. "I'm not leaving here without disabling that particle engine."

Rose grimaced. "But we don't even know where it is," she protested. "And they'll end up catching us again, or finding the TARDIS. We should just leave."

"What are you talking about?" asked Jack.

"A particle accelerator engine from a Paxtril C-class short range cruiser," explained the Doctor. "Your associates have got their hands on a new toy."

Jack grimaced. "Oh, man. That's not good."

"My thoughts exactly." The Doctor switched the settings on the sonic screwdriver and activated it. As he waved it around the room, the hum changed pitch slightly. "They've taken it upstairs, quite a way up. Top floor, I'm guessing."

Rose shook her head. "The TARDIS is in the hardcopy archives," she said firmly. "Hardly any guards at all. We could reach it so easily and be done with this place. And no risk of a paradox."

"I told you," said the Doctor, "they could take out half the planet with that particle engine. I'm not leaving it intact."

"And I told you, we can't risk getting caught by Torchwood." She snatched her pack away from him and slung it over one shoulder. "We should get out of here as fast as possible."

"Right, so we just let these people blunder about until they cause a decelerated ion particle discharge," retorted the Doctor. "Brilliant plan."

"Better than letting a bunch of Reapers eat everybody 'cause you wanted to play fast and loose with causality!"

The Doctor glared at her. "Between the two of us, who do you think is better equipped to tell the difference between a fixed and flux point in time? Honestly, what you know about causality wouldn't even fill a primer book."

"I know enough to tell when things have to happen the way…the way they happened the first time around," she protested.

The Doctor just rolled his eyes.

Jack looked back and forth between the two of them as they glowered at each other, arms crossed over their leather jackets. "Wow. The resemblance is eerie."

They both turned their glares on him, and Jack held up his hands defensively. "Hey, don't blame a guy for pointing out the obvious. Anyway, he's got a point, Rose. That engine is dangerous, and I don't know if Torchwood has the know-how to deal with that kind of tech. And it's not really the kind of thing you want to start playing around with."

"But—"

"Look, there's not going to be a paradox," interrupted the Doctor. "Not a dangerous one, anyway. I'd know if there were, so quit your whinging. Now," he added, turning to Jack before Rose could lodge another objection, "is there any way to slow down that security sweep?"

Jack glanced at Rose, but she seemed to have given up the fight for the moment at least. He looked back at the Doctor and nodded. "I think I've got something that can help. The sweep has three teams, and they go up through the building three floors at a time, using bioscanners and psychic resonance detectors. If they encounter anything suspect, they'll pull all teams to that floor and do a more thorough screening."

He started patting down his coat pockets. "Luckily…ah, there we go!" He pulled out a small, black box out of his pocket and tossed it to the Doctor. "Luckily, I've got a ghost at the ready. A self-actualizing bio-pattern and psychic echo enhancement emitter. It takes the read-outs of everybody's life signs, skews them, and bounces them back, creating false signals."

"So the scanners tell them that they've found something alien," said Rose, apparently resigned to going along with the Doctor's plan.

"Exactly. And while they're trying to track down the signal, the ghost sends out bursts of electrostatic waves—basically a mish-mash that scrambles their scanners. So while they're trying to search, they have to stop and recalibrate their equipment."

"Not just a ghost, then—a poltergeist," said the Doctor with grudging admiration.

"Right," said Jack. "Should be enough to keep 'em busy for a few hours."

"But what about the security on the top floor?" asked Rose. "Won't they have guards on the labs up there?"

"Well, I asked the warehouse guard if he could get a few temporary security passes for you both," answered Jack. "So we should be ok for ID. Once we get up there, we can use my psychic paper to claim we have authorization to access the particle engine."

"But you can't," protested Rose. "Torchwood employees get basic psychic training. They'll spot the fake."

Jack grinned. "Yeah, but luckily, I participated in designing some of the security protocols for this place. Seems that, somehow, there's a select group of guards who never received the proper psychic training. I manipulated the scores on their tests so that it looks like they passed."

"How come?"

"So that I'd have a back door in and out of this place," he answered with a shrug. "I don't want the London hub getting too powerful."

"What do we have to do to activate the ghost?" asked the Doctor, passing it back to Jack.

"Well, the signal radius isn't huge," said Jack, "so the transmitter has to be in a central location. On this floor, that would be in the Acquisition Intake office, about four doors down from the entrance to the warehouse. Once it's in place, we're good to go—the scanners will trigger the activation sequence, and the ghost will start broadcasting."

"So we just have to stick it somewhere inconspicuous?" asked Rose.

"Yep."

"Then let's get moving. The sooner we take care of this, the sooner we can get out of here." Rose's face was grim.

"Yes, ma'am." Jack threw her a quick salute before reaching to open the door.

As they walked into the security office, the guard stood up behind the desk and nodded to Jack. "I've got the temporary security passes, sir." He indicated the two yellow badges on lanyards lying next to his computer. "I've just got to get them scanned into the system."

"Ah, thanks," said Jack. "Nice work, by the way." He flashed the man a grin. "What was your name again?"

"Bryce Williams," the man answered with a half-smile.

Jack laid on a little extra charm. "Nice to meet you, Bryce Williams."

"Honestly, Jack," muttered Rose as she stepped past him. "There's a time and place."

"Here you are, Agent Jones." The guard scanned the badge on a security monitor on his desk and then handed it to Rose.

"Thanks." She slipped it over her head.

"And this one," he said, repeating the scanning process, "is for an Agent Mickey Smith."

"That'd be me," said the Doctor resignedly as he reached for the badge.

"Thanks again for your help," added Jack. "I'll see you around maybe." He threw in a little wink, just for good measure.

"You are terrible, Jack," whispered Rose as they trailed behind the Doctor on their way back through the warehouse.

When he looked down at her, she was fighting a smile.

"Me?" He chuckled. "What about you?"

When she glanced back at him questioningly, he smirked. "Mickey Smith as an alias? Really? Do you have any idea what the Doctor's going to do when he remembers?"

Rose shrugged nonchalantly. "Not such a big worry. They got along pretty well after the regeneration. Besides," she added, her face breaking out in a huge grin, "it was really, really funny."

Jack just laughed.


	9. Chapter 9

The Doctor walked ahead of his two companions, listening to them talk and laugh, catching up. _Old friends_, he thought sourly and then immediately tried not to think of why that bothered him. Certainly it wasn't because he was being _possessive_ of Rose. No, that definitely wasn't it.

Not at all.

It was probably just discomfort with the man himself, this Jack Harkness, with his over-the-top flirting and utter wrongness like staring at an overly bright florescent light and the way he had an arm slung over Rose's shoulders and…

No. That wasn't it. Not it at all.

Maybe it was just the domesticity of the whole situation. He shrugged and rolled a shoulder, trying to shed the itchy feel of it. Just this morning, there hadn't been a person in the world who knew a thing about him. Now there were two, one of whom had literally popped out of nowhere, with all their inside jokes and shared history and easy camaraderie pressing against him. He had no idea what they knew about him, but he had the uncomfortable feeling that it was a lot.

He didn't want this. He hadn't asked for this.

He shoved away the thought that he just might need this. Alright, maybe he could use a little more contact with people in general—of the sort that didn't involve assassinations or volcanic destruction or trying to make small talk while clinging to an iceberg—but that seemed a far cry from this kind of intimacy. Besides, these two were keeping something from him. And while the Doctor knew better than anyone that some information was better kept under wraps, especially when timelines were at stake, the bottom line was that _he_ was supposed to be the one keeping the secrets.

"Doctor." Rose's hand on his jacket sleeve brought him back to here and now. "This is it."

They were stopped outside an open doorway. Inside, there was a large room filled with rows of gleaming metal countertops, covered with bits of alien tech. Much of it was obviously broken, but the Doctor thought he saw a working de-atomizing transducer and, ooh, the better part of a heating element from an Altarian toaster.

He might just need to, uh, liberate that.

The only people in the room were two young men in lab coats, one taking measurements of a bit of spaceship hull and the other sitting a computer recording the information.

"Alright," said Jack in a low voice. "The Acquisition Intake office. Basically a glorified library desk—all they do is catalog the incoming alien tech and slap a tag on it before sending it on to the warehouse. We just need to find a good spot to hide the ghost, someplace where it won't be spotted."

"We could just stash it in the rubbish bin," suggested Rose, shifting her weight uneasily.

"Yeah, but I'd like to be able to get it back, if possible," said Jack. "And I really don't want to go digging through the Torchwood dumpsters if I don't have to."

The Doctor was eyeing something on the other side of the room. "I think I might have a good hiding spot." When they both glanced at him, he nodded to a small, inconspicuous grey box on one of the countertops. "We put it in there."

"What is it?" asked Rose.

The Doctor grinned. "A suitcase. An alien suitcase, the sort with a triladium shell and a hydrogen-pyrotex core lock. They won't be getting into that in a hurry."

"Yeah, but can we?" asked Rose, glancing back down the hallway. "That sweep's going to get here soon. We don't have a lot of time to waste."

The Doctor shook his head. "Nah, won't take two ticks. I just need a minute or two to get it open. Then I'll set the lock's passcode to whatever you like," he added with a nod at Jack. "The ghost should be able to broadcast its signal from in there, and all you'll have to do to collect it is track the suitcase down from wherever they stash it in storage."

"Sounds good," said Jack. "We just need to keep the techs occupied…hmm." Suddenly he grinned. "Rose," he said with a wink, "I think the words 'distract the guards' are headed in your general direction."

She laughed, the tense lines of her face breaking apart as she gave Jack a little playful shove.

The Doctor gave another shoulder roll—that was definitely one of those inside jokes. Maybe the tension he was feeling was coming from all the timeline friction—causality and probability fragments colliding in the time stream. One thing was for certain, though; it definitely wasn't the way Rose's hand was still lingering on Jack's arm.

"Well, it's about time, yeah?" said Rose, still laughing. "With you around, I was starting to think I'd never get the chance."

Jack patted her hand. "C'mon, I'll introduce you."

He led Rose over to the two young men and fed them some story about how she was going to be taking over the Cardiff warehouse and would they be willing to give her an overview of the system? Oh, yes, they would. In no time at all, the two techs were falling over themselves trying to explain the inner workings of alien technology acquisition database to Rose.

Jack gave the Doctor a quick nod, and together, they headed for the suitcase on the other side of the room. Jack positioned himself between the Doctor and the other people in the room, giving him some cover to work. The Doctor pulled out the sonic and started scanning the pyrotex lock interface.

"Alright," said Jack, glancing over his shoulder to where Rose was keeping the techs busy. "Rose is otherwise occupied. Now's your chance."

The Doctor was trying to remember exactly how to deactivate the alarm system and didn't look up. "Chance for what?"

"You want to know what's wrong with me. As it happens, so do I."

The Doctor waited a beat before asking the obvious question. "So what's wrong with you?"

Jack took a deep breath. "I can't die."

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Well, obviously."

Jack blinked. "It's obvious?"

"You're a living, breathing, fixed point in time—a fact. Not dying is one of the prerequisites. Well," the Doctor added with a wry twist of the lips, "the only prerequisite, really." He made a slight adjustment to the programming matrix and managed to disarm the primary security system. "So how long has this been a problem?"

"More than a century."

The Doctor glanced up from his work. "And that's how long it's been since you've seen me?" At Jack's nod, he felt a twinge of guilt—sure, he hadn't abandoned the man yet, but he inevitably would, and a hundred years was a long time to wait, no matter how you sliced it. "Sorry," he muttered.

"Yeah," said Jack half-heartedly. "Look, do you have any idea what's causing it?"

"You didn't run afoul of an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch, and some rubber bands, did you?" At Jack's blank look, the Doctor just grinned. "Never mind. So what happened when you died the first time?"

"I just…gasped and came back to life."

"And what was it that killed you?"

Jack shifted uncomfortably. "It wasn't an unusual death. Well, what I mean is that plenty of others have died that way without becoming immortal."

The Doctor pinched his lips, wondering again what it was they were hiding from him, but he let it slide. For now. "I suppose I could run some tests, but I'm not sure if I'd find anything. I can't think of anything that would cause spontaneous immortality—what you're describing should be impossible." He adjusted the sonic, made a few adjustments to the locking mechanism. "If that was the first time you'd died, how do you know you weren't always like this?"

"I'm pretty sure it wasn't the case when we first met—you didn't seem to notice anything wrong with me then. Well," Jack added, "at least not temporally speaking. You weren't all that happy to have me on board, so I'm thinking that if I was a—what did you say? Temporal obscenity? Yeah, you definitely would have mentioned it."

The Doctor fiddled with the last setting on the lock. "I'm not fond of Time Agents, as a rule. Too much confidence and too little actual understanding." He leaned over and squinted slightly at the circuit board. "I wouldn't normally ask one to come with me."

Jack chuckled and cast a quick glance over his shoulder to the third member of their party. "You do when Rose asks you to."

With a light click, the last latch came undone. Jack pulled the ghost out of his pocket and offered it to him, but the Doctor hesitated. "So," he started, unsure what exactly he wanted to ask. "Rose and you…"

Jacked looked a little impatient. "Rose and me, what?"

The Doctor didn't answer. Really, the whole thing was awkward, and there was hardly any point in asking—whatever would be, would be, and anyway, he had to forget this little interlude. "Nothing." He took the ghost and tucked it inside the suitcase alongside a Venusian spearmint toothbrush, a chartreuse jumper, and a set of three-legged trousers.

Unfortunately, Jack didn't seem to want to let the subject drop. "Oh," he said, rocking back on his heels. "Rose and me. Rose and ME." He seemed extremely amused by the Doctor's question. "Is that what you're asking? Were we together?" Jack waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "Lovers?"

"Just wondering how long you were both traveling with me, is all," lied the Doctor smoothly, focusing his attention on reintegrating the locking mechanism. "Here, enter a passcode." He slid the suitcase over to Jack.

"Right." Jack leaned over and tapped in a code. "Well, then, to answer the question you weren't asking—no. We weren't involved. Ever. I like my face the way it is, thanks." He shifted the suitcase back to the Doctor.

The Doctor reactivated the cascading security sequence, and the suitcase latch reengaged. "Jealous boyfriend?"

Jack snorted. "Something like that."

There was something in his voice that made the Doctor glance up once more.

"Let's just say," added Jack, leaning forward with something approaching a smirk, "that I didn't want to end up on the wrong side of the TARDIS airlock."

The Doctor felt his jaw drop as a myriad of possible responses to that comment ran through his mind. He finally settled on, "The TARDIS doesn't have an airlock." It didn't exactly get to the heart of the matter, but at least it wasn't an undignified squeak.

Jack just gave him a friendly, understanding shoulder pat. "Rose," he called, "we'd better get going."

She waved a hand in acknowledgement before saying goodbye to the techs.

"Oh, one other thing," Jack added softly, as the Doctor tucked the sonic screwdriver back into his jacket pocket. "Don't tell her. About me, I mean. I don't know why you didn't tell her the truth, but don't tell her now."

The Doctor straightened up. "Why not?"

Jack looked him straight in the eye, and the Doctor fought the urge to look away from the wave of temporal miasma. "Because. You probably had a good reason for not telling her the first time around." He shrugged a little. "Don't know what it would be, but…I trust you. There were times when I thought I wouldn't, plenty of times, but…yeah, I still do." He clapped the Doctor on the shoulder once before turning to join Rose.

There was a moment, one terrible moment, when the Doctor's hands tightened into fists, and there was a word, one word right there on the tip of his tongue.

_Don't_.

What were they thinking, these two? No one had any business trusting him. Jack and Rose seemed to know every damned thing about him—how could they not know what he was capable of? The things he'd done?

"Hey! Agent Smith!"

Rose. With a jolt, he came back to the present. There she was, pink and yellow and smiling as she walked toward him, tongue between her teeth, and he felt the phantoms of smoke and flame dissipate from the edges of his mind. She needed him in the here and now, and that was enough.

"Remember, we've got to go check in before the sweep gets here," she said, speaking loudly for the benefit of the Torchwood personnel as she slid an arm through one of his. "No getting caught up in all the alien stuff. We'd better get going." One little tug, and he was moving along with her, following in her wake.

Rose glanced up at him, looking concerned. "You alright?" she asked softly.

The Doctor looked down at her for a moment. "Yeah," he answered and was surprised to find that it was at least partially true.

She squeezed his arm once and then let go as they left the Acquisition Intake Office. "Alright, that's done. Ghost deployed, alien tech cataloguers distracted, and hey, nobody ended up with an anachronistic hole in their head. Good job all around. Now, which way to the closest stairwell?"

"Back the way we came," said Jack. "We'd better get moving," he added, glancing at his watch. "The sweep could come through at any time." They jogged down the hallway, Jack and Rose giving friendly 'oh-aren't-security-checks-the-worst' smiles to the few Torchwood employees they passed.

They were just going by the main warehouse and were nearly to the door to the stairwell when there was a chime over the intercom. "This floor is now subject to a level 2 security sweep. All personnel must report to their designated work areas. Please remain in your work area throughout the duration of the sweep. Thank you."

"Damn it," muttered Jack. "Too late."


	10. Chapter 10

"Seal the door," said Rose frantically. She ran toward it, the Doctor on her heels, and turned the latch for the dead bolt.

The Doctor grabbed for his sonic and used it to melt a portion of the lock interior. "There, that'll slow them down, but it won't hold forever."

"Well, yeah, they'll come up the other stairs, for one." Rose automatically grabbed for the Doctor's free hand. "That's it then. We're going to have to fight our way up."

The Doctor started to open his mouth to respond, but he was momentarily distracted by the way her fingers were interlacing with his. Jack was quicker.

"No good," he answered grimly. "The second we try to, they'll sound the alarm, and we'll be up to our necks in Torchwood security. But the ghost should still mess with their equipment, so hopefully they won't be able to target the Doctor's biosigns. We'll have to bunker down and hope your security passes are enough to convince them."

"But Jack, the TARDIS," said Rose. "Even if we don't get caught by the sweep, they'll find it, and then they'll know the Doctor is here, and then they'll lock the whole building down." She shook her head. "We should make a go at the stairs. Or maybe the Doctor could get the lift working."

"I think—" started the Doctor, but he was quickly interrupted.

"If the elevator's an option, we could give it a go," said Jack. "But unless you're sure, we should get back to the security office—that's the only chance we have of looking legit."

"No, we're not going back," said Rose firmly, cutting off any comments from the two men. "Look, here's what we'll do. We get to the lift and see if we can get it to move or get access to the lift shaft or something. If we need more time, Jack, you'll go see if you can slow the sweep down."

"Wait a minute, Rose," said Jack, "what about the—"

"Excuse me," interrupted the Doctor, glaring at the two of them. "Who's in charge here?"

Jack and Rose both looked at him and then at each other. "I am," they said in unison.

"No, you aren't," objected Jack. "Rose, I'm the one who knows the inner workings of Torchwood."

"Yeah, and I'm the one with the knowledge of what's supposed to happen in this timeline," she responded, hands on her hips. "Besides, I've been in Torchwood before."

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "If you're both done being ridiculous, do you think you could shut it for a minute and listen to me?" He waited until they stopped glaring at each other and turned to face him. "There's an easy way out. Rose, you ought to know what it is." When she still looked blank, he sighed. Silly little human brains. "Escape pod?"

Rose's face lit up. "The teleport!" She snapped her fingers, turning to Jack. "There's a Traxilain escape pod back in the warehouse with a short-range teleport on board."

"Exactly," said the Doctor. "We just get back into the warehouse and into that pod, and we're free."

Jack nodded quickly. "Let's do it."

It was actually easier getting into the warehouse the second time around, since most of the guards had moved into the security office for the duration of the sweep. The Doctor led the way with Jack and Rose close behind, and he had to hand it to them—they were good, both of them moving quickly and quietly in tandem. In fact, the Doctor could feel the rhythm of how the three of them would fit together, a team.

As they turned down the row with the escape pod, they could hear voices coming from the entrance and the thrumming sound of a bioscanner. Without a word, the three of them broke into a run.

"You're gonna have to get us into that pod fast, Doc," muttered Jack, glancing behind them. "The first sweep team is right behind us."

The Doctor nodded as they reached the escape pod. "It'll be sealed tight. But…" He adjusted the sonic and activated it next to the hatch. A panel of lights suddenly came to life in the black skin of the pod. "Lucky for us, I'm very clever."

Rose was practically bouncing. "You know, I think I've heard that somewhere before."

The Doctor flashed a grin back at her as he tapped at the now-visible hatch controls. A moment later, there was a soft hissing sound of the seal breaking, and the round hatch slid open.

Rose grabbed his arm. "You know, you never answered my question earlier—if it's never been opened before, does that mean the original owners are still inside?"

The Doctor shook his head. "The pod was jettisoned for some other reason, probably some sort of circuitry malfunction. Nobody on board." He cupped his hands, fingers threaded together, to make a foothold for her. "C'mon, then. Up you go."

With a little boost from the Doctor, Rose was soon shoving her pack inside and climbing into the pod. Jack followed her, pulling himself up. A moment later, the Doctor bellied his way through the porthole, struggling to get his larger frame through the small entrance.

The interior of the pod was very austere, and almost everything was a uniform shade of steel grey. There were panels lining three of the walls, and below them, there were built-in benches, set slightly too low on the wall for human proportions. Rose didn't seem to be too picky, though; she dropped her bag on one and took a seat next to it. Jack remained standing, stooping slightly under the low ceiling.

The Doctor sealed up the hatch behind them. "Alright. Let's see about that teleport." He knelt down near the piloting controls and started pulling open the command interface modules. "Looks like there might be some damage to the power systems. Might take a little while."

"Need a hand?" asked Jack, squatting down beside him.

The Doctor paused, considering. "You know anything about cross-wave trionic wave converters?"

Jack grinned. "Oh yeah." He knelt down beside the Doctor and started detaching the modules from the primary drive coupling.

"So when you say 'awhile'…" said Rose, eyeing them both as wires, nodes, and circuitry boards started to pile up next to them.

"An hour or two," said the Doctor easily. "Don't worry—we'll be alright."

"What time is it?"

"3:16," said Jack with a quick glance at his watch.

Rose scooted down onto the floor. "Anything I could do to help?" she asked, peering into the exposed machinery.

"No offense, Rose," said Jack, "but this isn't exactly twenty-first century stuff."

The Doctor looked up from the third electrical inverter in time to see Rose narrowing her eyes at Jack.

"Well, good thing I've been to a few other time periods, then." She bent over the Doctor's shoulder. "That's the manifold mapping drive, yeah?" she asked, pointing to a circuit board with hundreds of small chips inserted into it. "Is the coordinate system spherical or cylindrical?"

"Spherical," answered the Doctor slowly.

"Give it here. I'll recalibrate the kinematic line chips. That's what you were going to do, right?" She looked at the Doctor and then at Jack. "Reset the mapping drive so that there's no chance of old data left over from a previous jump when you restart the system?"

Without a word, the Doctor handed her the drive. He watched as she detached one of the chips and flipped it over in her hand, squinting at the various connector pins. She selected one and then paused. "This one, right?"

He nodded.

"OK." She pulled it free of the connection port and plugged it back in to the alternate port, before glancing up at him. "Did I do that right?"

"Yeah," said the Doctor with a little smile, feeling strangely proud—there was that timeline feedback again. Satisfied, Rose reinserted it into the board and moved on to the next chip.

"So," said Jack after a moment, glancing at Rose as she worked, "this is new."

"Yeah, funny story—I had to learn a thing or two about teleport and transmat technology since the last time I saw you," answered Rose lightly. "As soon as it won't risk a paradox, I'll tell you all about it."

They worked on the teleport for nearly an hour, and the Doctor found to his surprise that he was enjoying himself. He and Jack repaired the malfunction in the power drive and discussed the pros and cons of various energy conversion systems, and once she was finished with the mapping drive, Rose watched them work, occasionally asking a very clever question or two. It was…nice.

There really was something to be said for having company, he mused. Funny how'd he'd forgotten that.

They were nearly finished when Rose interrupted the shop talk. "Jack, I've just thought of something. What about the security footage?"

Crouching down next to the central panel, the Doctor rolled his eyes. "You and the security footage," he muttered.

"No, but Jack, now you'll be on it helping us escape," said Rose insistently. "Won't you get caught?"

Jack was busy rewiring the power flow modulator. "Not a problem," he said eventually. "There's less security on these upper levels than you'd think—Torchwood's weakness is definitely their arrogance. In any case, I was in the central security office when I spotted you two on the cameras. Once I realized you were here, I dropped a virus into the system that should eat through the footage for today." He glanced back over his shoulder at her. "I have a really good computer person on my payroll."

Rose didn't sound all that reassured. "And what about the security personnel in the office?"

"Ret-conned."

"Ah."

The Doctor wondered again what exactly ret-con was, and he was just about to ask when Jack managed to patch the power through the transportation matrix, and he had to concentrate on rerouting the initial start-up programming to a non-central subroutine.

"Oh, now we're talking," said Jack with enthusiasm. "Systems are go."

"Did it work?" asked Rose eagerly, scooting closer to take a look. She leaned over them, her hand on the Doctor's shoulder.

"Yep." The Doctor grinned back at her, fast and loose. "Fancy a trip upstairs?"

Her face lit up. "You know, I think I do," she replied, putting on an accent a bit more posh than her own.

The Doctor hopped up, nearly banging his head on the low ceiling. "We just need to get the coordinates set," he said, leaning over, fingers dancing over the control panel. "And then we'll hop on up to Floor 38 and pick up the TARDIS." With just a bit of a flourish, he activated the start-up sequence.

With an almost musical hum, the teleport system booted up, illuminating a red square on the floor in the center of the pod. Rose clapped her hands in excitement. She grabbed her pack and slung it over her shoulder.

"Go on, get on the teleport pad," said the Doctor, waving his hand at the brightly lit square, and Jack and Rose stepped onto it. The Doctor keyed in the countdown activation and joined them as the teleport system began beeping. "Ready?"

"Ready," said Jack, grabbing Rose's hand.

"Ready," confirmed Rose, taking the Doctor's hand with her free one.

"And we're off," said the Doctor with a grin. A moment later, the teleport fired up, and they disappeared in a flash.

A moment later, they materialized in an empty corridor, just outside of the records archive.

"Everybody alright?" asked the Doctor.

"Ugg," said Rose, rubbing a hand over her face. "Alright, but I think you might have left my eyebrows behind."

The Doctor leaned over and looked closely at her face. "Nope, still attached."

"Hey, nice aim," said Jack with a grin, slapping the Doctor on the shoulder. "Much better than usual."

"My aim's just fine," protested the Doctor. "Spot-on."

"You know, I think I'd have something to say about that, but we really don't have time to get into it," said Rose. She dug out her version of the psychic paper and ran it over the security scanner on the door. The light blinked from red to green, and the door unlocked. Rose pushed it open. "Let's go."

The hardcopy case file archives seemed like something that belonged in a basement—dark, cramped, and musty, despite the enormous size of the room. There was no one at the front desk, just a bell and a sign directing them to ring for service. Beyond the front entry space were corridors of filing cabinets and free-standing shelves packed with cardboard boxes.

The Doctor paused to nudge open a box on one of the shelves. It was mostly full of files, but there was a paper coffee cup and a used toothbrush, both meticulously, and inexplicably, sealed inside evidence bags. "They're not much for throwing things away, are they?"

"Torchwood?" said Jack wryly. "Are you kidding? Nearly everything's recorded in their electronic database, but they still keep paper records dating all the way back to the nineteenth century. They probably have a file for storing old post-it notes and pieces of alien shoelace."

Rose was checking down each of the rows. "Nobody around. So where'd you park?"

The Doctor closed the box and nodded down the row. "This way."

He led them through the maze of cabinets. Behind him, Jack and Rose were talking quietly—she was asking him questions about his time with Torchwood, and Jack was nimbly avoiding answering—but the Doctor wasn't really listening. As they got closer to their destination, he could hear the faint hum of his ship, and he picked up the pace. One more corner, and there it was—the TARDIS.

At the sight, both of his companions fell silent.


	11. Chapter 11

"Well," said the Doctor stiffly, "this is it. The TARDIS." It was entirely unnecessary, of course—if they had traveled with him, obviously they would know his ship—but the sudden silence was making him edgy. He quickly fished out his key and opened the door. Without looking back at his companions, he trotted quickly up the ramp and began initiating a scan of the upper level, looking for a likely spot to land.

He could hear them come in, their footsteps on the grating. His first passengers since…well. It had been quite awhile. And both of them still so quiet—no gasps, no exclamations of wonder, no comments on the impossible dimensions.

Keeping his eyes on the console, the Doctor noticed an increase in the drag on the Time Rotor, no doubt the result of Jack's odd effect on time. He quickly recalibrated the control matrix to temporarily account for it, glad that he spotted it.

Otherwise, who knows where they might have ended up?

Once the scan was running, the Doctor spent a few extra moments keeping his hands busy, fiddling with the settings on the console before looking up at his passengers.

Jack and Rose were both standing at the top of the ramp, faces upturned toward the arched ceiling. Silently, Rose stretched out a hand to Jack, and he took it, smiling. Together, they stood looking around his ship like it was sacred. Like it was a shrine, and his daft ship was altering the pitch of her song, ever-so-slightly, in greeting. The TARDIS was welcoming them home.

"Right," said the Doctor, a little too loudly, because it was too much, seeing them like that and hearing the TARDIS respond. He could feel the pull of the timeline, could tell that there would be a time when he would have a part in this strange, near-domestic sentiment, but it didn't belong to him, not yet anyway, and the dissonance was setting his teeth on edge.

Just then, the console chimed, signaling the completion of the scan. The Doctor made use of the distraction. "Looks like there's an empty room on the top floor that we can park in without attracting any attention. Best get upstairs and finish up so that we can get out of this place. You might want to grab hold of something."

With a laugh, Rose let go of Jack's hand and ran forward to grab the edge of the console, running her hands over it lovingly. Jack followed suit, although his touches looked more like caresses, and the Doctor fought the urge to smack his hands away.

"Off we go, then." A quick flip of a switch, and TARDIS made the short hop across the upper floor. The Doctor set the handbrake. "Let's see what's out there." He jogged down the ramp, trying hard not to notice the way Rose's eyes lingered on the console, the roundels, the Rotor. He opened the door and stepped out.

The room they had landed in looked like it would be an office space eventually, although it was still empty of furniture. There were signs of recent construction everywhere—plastic tarps, ladders, and painting equipment, and the air smelled of freshly cut lumber. The door was partially open, and from the looks of it, the remodel extended out into the hallway as well.

"I wonder what they're up to up here," said the Doctor, looking around. "Is this part of the building new?"

"Hell if I know," said Jack as he and Rose exited the TARDIS, "and no, this floor has always been here." He paused, lifting up a tarp to inspect the new construction. "I haven't heard anything about a new project, but then again, Torchwood definitely knows how to keep secrets, even from itself. How about you, Rose—any idea?"

"Nope," she answered quickly, stepping around a stack of paint cans. "Not a clue. What time is it?"

"Uh, 4:33," said Jack, checking his watch.

"Then let's get this done." She turned to the Doctor. "Which way's the engine?"

The Doctor pulled out his sonic screwdriver and scanned the area. As the scan narrowed in, he walked toward the doorway. "That way," he said, jerking his head to the left. About fifty feet down the hallway, there was a foyer with a set of large doors flanked by two large red posts and two guards standing on either side. There were several people in lab coats standing nearby having a conversation. "I'm going to hazard a guess and say it's just through those doors."

Rose and Jack joined him at the doorway, and Jack gave a low whistle. "Whatever they're doing, it's at a high security level," he said, grimacing. "You see the red things on either side of the door? Scanners—special security clearance needed to get in."

"Lot of people," said Rose nervously. "We aren't going to be able to just waltz in there, even with the psychic paper."

"Agreed," said Jack grimly. "We're going to need a plan."

As they watched, a large group of people exited the room, joining the group in the foyer. They started walking down the hallway, and the Doctor, Rose, and Jack ducked back into the unfinished office until they passed by.

Once they were gone, Rose risked a glance out the doorway. "Maybe it's empty now," she said hopefully.

"Doubt it," said Jack, "but the fewer people, the better."

"I don't suppose any of the guards on the doors are the ones who failed psychic training?"

Jack gave a wry smile. "No such luck. And the trouble is, even if we get passed the guards, the security scanners will set off an alarm unless we have special clearance logged onto our ID cards. Do you think you could deactivate them with the sonic?" he asked the Doctor.

The Doctor considered it. "Could do, but the guards would probably notice."

"So what we need," said Rose with a sigh, "is a way to get special clearance on our ID cards. And let me guess—that's gonna take a trip back downstairs."

But Jack seemed to have spotted something. "Maybe not. That," he said, pointing at a young man walking down the hall in the opposite direction of the doors, "is James Moore. Great guy. Likes to sail in his free time—cuts quite a figure in his sailing outfit, actually, and—"

"Jack," interrupted Rose impatiently.

"_And_, as I was about to say, he's been recently assigned to the security office and, more importantly, he owes me a favor."

"And how'd he do in psychic school?" asked the Doctor.

Jack grinned. "He wasn't the best student."

"Alright, let's go then," said Rose.

They caught up with James in the hallway, and so far, luck was on their side. With Jack's charm and a few quick lies, they soon found themselves at a make-shift computer terminal in what was apparently the temporary security office on this floor during the construction.

"I'll need your ID cards and your authorization orders," said James, pulling a chair up to the computer screen.

"Not a problem," said Jack as he collected the ID cards from Rose and the Doctor. "And here's our authorization orders." He tossed the cards and his piece of psychic paper down on the desk and walked around it to stand behind James.

"Alright then. It'll just be a moment," said James as he began typing. "Oh, hold up. It looks like they've closed out the special security clearance program for that restricted area. Odd. They shouldn't do that unless everyone with orders has been logged in already."

To his right, the Doctor could feel Rose tense up, and from the other side of the desk, Jack threw them both a look of concern. But before they could say anything, James tilted his head to check the psychic paper once more. "But you've got your orders here, and everything's legit, so it must just be a glitch. I'll have to go back through the protocol sequence, though, so it'll take some time."

"Take all the time you need," said Jack, trying to keep the relief out of his voice.

For several minutes, the room was quiet except for the sound of James typing and Rose fidgeting. The Doctor rested his hand on her shoulder and felt her practically vibrating with the need to get moving. He gave her shoulder a squeeze, and she stilled.

"Huh," said James, leaning over the desk to peer at the psychic paper. "The print is so tiny on this. I can barely make out the process numbers." He frowned. "Come to think of it, I've never seen an authorization order that was on such a small—"

"Why don't you let me handle the data input?" interrupted Jack, already wheeling James' chair back. "I'm familiar with the codes already."

James hesitated only a moment before nodding, and Jack settled down in front of the computer and got to work. He also managed to keep up a nice, distracting conversation with James, with enough deliberation that the Doctor imagined whatever he was doing on the computer involved erasing his own footprints out of Torchwood's security database.

Completing the security clearance was taking some time, though. The Doctor leaned back against the wall with a sigh and idly wondered what the Autons were up to—whatever it was, they'd definitely have to go, but he couldn't help feel a certain, sneaking sympathy for an enemy who would require a lot more running and a lot less bureaucracy.

Beside him, Rose was clearly getting antsy again, shifting her weight back and forth as she kept her eyes on a clock on the wall.

"Relax," said the Doctor quietly.

"4:58," she mouthed in return.

"Just about done," said Jack, looking up from the monitor. "By the way, James, thanks for your help. I'm just terrible with paperwork. We were supposed to be in there a half-hour ago—I'm hoping we won't make too big a commotion going in."

"Oh, sure." James nodded understandingly. "You know, you could go in the other entrance. The one that goes past the Lever Room."

"Sorry," said Rose, her head snapping up. "Which room, did you say?"

"Uh, the Lever Room," James repeated. "The door's just down that corridor and to the left. You'll have to be careful; there's some new construction in there. Once you're inside, just follow the hallway past the Lever Room and around the corner—should take you right to the side entrance. Probably make less of a fuss going in that way."

"James, my man," said Jack, giving him a friendly shoulder-bump, "you're a life-saver. C'mon, you two," he added to the Doctor and Rose, and they both fell in line behind him. Together, they walked in the direction of the alternate entrance.

"Nearly there," said Jack, glancing back at them as they turned the corner. "Hey, doing alright?" he asked, looking at Rose with some concern. The Doctor looked as well—her lips were pinched, her eyes troubled.

Her answer was clipped. "Yep." As they reached an empty stretch of corridor, she fished her weapon out of her bag and slipped it into her pocket.

The Doctor raised an eyebrow at her.

"Stun only," she said, her only answer.

Fortunately, Torchwood had been very thorough in labeling their new rooms, and they were able to find the Lever Room door without difficulty. There were two guards standing in front of it, and another set of those red security scanners, but there didn't seem to be the same in-and-out traffic at this entrance.

Jack straightened his shoulders and led them over to the two guards. "Agent Harkness," he said, holding up his badge. "Special security clearance for myself and my two agents."

Rose and the Doctor did the same, and the guards waved them through. Thanks to James, the security scanners didn't react to them as they stepped through and pushed open the doors.

Inside, the hallway was dark. Up ahead and to the left, an open doorway led to a slightly brighter room, and past that, the hallway turned to the right.

As they reached the open doorway, Jack paused and read the placard. "The Lever Room." He poked his head inside. "Looks empty, but they're definitely building something in here. You want to check it out?"

"Yeah," said the Doctor at the same moment Rose said, "No."

"This isn't what we came here for," she said firmly. "And we're on the clock."

"Yeah, but Rose," said Jack, already stepping through the doorway, "we might be able to learn a thing or two about what they're doing."

"And I keep telling you, we're fine," said the Doctor, following him in. "Let's see what they've got in here."

The Lever Room was clearly a work in progress. There were gaps in the ceiling where the lighting was only partially installed and piles of construction materials on the floor. The only light was filtering in through windows at one end of the room. Below them, a temporary work station was set up on a folding table, partially hidden behind a stack of concrete blocks.

The Doctor walked the length of the room, passing by two large holes in the floor, one on either side about halfway up. Stacked next to them were piles of equipment awaiting installation, including what looked like two large wheel wells.

At the far end of the room, the walls were stabilized with several large, white support braces set at an angle. The Doctor stopped and tested his weight against one of them. "Sturdy," he remarked. "But why do they need all the extra support?" He considered the stretch of white wall between the supports, and something tickled, right on the edges of his perception.

Well, now. What was that?

"No idea," said Jack, interrupting his thoughts. He was kneeling down beside one of the holes in the floor. "But Doctor, you should take a look at this."

The Doctor left the white wall and joined him. The gap was full of wires and electrical connections, and there was a collection of heavy duty cables running away under the floor. "Looks like some sort of energy channeling mechanism," he said thoughtfully. "But channeling to what?"

He stood and crossed the room, stooping by the other hole. "Dual-core particle matrices," he mused, lifting up a few of the connectors. And judging from the direction of the source cables, the energy would be coming from down the hall, undoubtedly from the particle engine.

The Doctor glanced up at his companions. Jack was busy inspecting the other pile of equipment. Rose, however, was just standing there, her face blank, nothing in front of her except the newly painted white wall at the other end of the room.

"So," he said evenly, "any thoughts?" Out of the corner of his eye, the Doctor could see Jack just shrug and shake his head, but he kept his eyes on Rose, standing still and pale in the middle of the room.

She didn't appear to hear him.

"Rose," said the Doctor in a low voice.

With a start, she came back to the present. "Hmm? Oh." She turned and looked down at him. "Sorry, what was that?"

"You sure you're alright?" he asked.

"Yeah," she answered quickly. "I'm fine. So shall we move on then?" Before either of the men had a chance to answer, she started walking toward the door.

The Doctor watched her go. Something was going on here, something more than nerves and concerns about the timeline, but he had no idea what. One thing was for certain, though—Rose clearly didn't want to talk about it.

He and Jack exchanged quick glances and then stood up to follow her. Might as well, the Doctor reasoned—he wouldn't mind a look at the computer, but there were probably more answers to be found in the next room anyway.


	12. Chapter 12

As they stepped into the hallway, Rose held up a hand to stop them. "Wait. We should lock the door. Seal it if we can."

"Why?"

"Because. Once we have control of this area, we don't want anybody coming in or out."

Jack shrugged. "Not a bad idea."

"I told you," said the Doctor, "it won't take more than a moment to do what I need to do."

"You don't know that," said Rose firmly. "Look, we are very close to getting out of here, but we are short on time. We need to take this seriously. Jack, you know what we have to do. Subterfuge is only going to get us so far. We've got to neutralize whoever is left in that room and do whatever you're gonna do to that engine before we leave."

"What do you mean, neutralize?" hissed the Doctor. "We're not killing anybody."

"Of course not," she snapped back. "But they aren't going to let you play around with their new toy just because you ask nicely, and those ear pieces they're all wearing? Yeah, those give them a really fast way to call for back-up if they get suspicious. One call, and we'll be up to our eyeballs in guards. With guns. So we pick our targets, tell them we have clearance to be there, and then we take them out. Nonlethal damage only," she added when the Doctor was still staring at her askance. "But the most important thing is to get the earpiece off of them before they can call for back-up."

"You've learned about more than just teleports since we last met," said Jack, wavering between sounding impressed and concerned.

"Yeah, well—," began Rose, but she was interrupted.

"Excuse me," called a woman's voice. "Do you have clearance to be in here?"

They looked up to see a young woman in a lab coat standing at the end of the hallway. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose, looking annoyed. "This is a restricted area. Do you have clearance?"

Jack gave her a big smile. "Yes, we do," he said, holding up his ID card. "I'm Captain Jack Hark—"

Suddenly, there was a soft sound of a stun discharge, and the woman collapsed.

Jack stood looking at the slumped form on the floor. "What just happened?"

The Doctor was staring at Rose. "What the hell did you do that for?" he demanded.

She was tucking her weapon back into her pocket. "Because," she said quietly, moving to where the woman lay and checked her vitals. Nodding her head, apparently satisfied, she removed the woman's earpiece and then attempted to pick her up in a fireman's lift. She was struggling with it—the Torchwood employee was taller and heavier than she was—and Jack hurried over to help her. Together, they moved the woman into the Lever Room and set her down behind a stack of equipment.

After they had arranged her as comfortably as possible, Rose rechecked her pulse. "She should be out for a good long while. Jack," she added quietly, "ret-con?"

He nodded in response and started to fish something out of his pockets.

Rose straightened up and rolled a shoulder, stretching. She looked utterly unconcerned about what she had just done, but when she finally lifted her eyes to meet the Doctor's, she seemed to deflate a little. "I know—it's not ideal," she said, glancing back at the unconscious form behind her. "But if we're going to do this, we've got to go in quick and clean. Less chance of people getting seriously hurt that way. And Doctor," she continued, gesturing toward the hallway behind him, "if we lock the door, we'll have fewer people involved. Right?"

The Doctor nodded reluctantly. Her reasoning was sound, and honestly, he agreed with her, but there was something about her detached pragmatism that just felt…wrong. He hardly knew her, but the longer they were together, the more he could feel the pull of their mutual timeline. In the back of his mind, he could sense all the ways that they would fit together and how well—but this strange, cool-eyed efficiency was out of place.

But, then again…he really couldn't fault her logic. Swallowing back his objections, he went to sonic the door shut, jamming the lock.

Once that was done, they continued down the hallway, turning the corner. Along one side of the hall, there were a series of large windows with wire-reinforced glass looking into a large room and a doorway. At the end of the hallway, there was another door, presumably the same one that they'd spotted before that out to the main Torchwood facility.

There were four Torchwood employees visible through the glass—one of them the tech with the monitoring equipment who they'd seen earlier, still hovering over the particle engine, which sat in the center of the room. There was a woman with a similar device, conferring with him. On the other side of the room, another woman sat at a desk, working on a computer. To her right, standing up against the wall, was a security guard.

Rose held up a hand to stop them while they were still in the shadow of the darker hallway. "Alright," she said softly. "First priority is the guard. I'm the only one with a weapon, so I'll take him. Jack, can you take out the two techs?" When he nodded, she continued. "Doctor, you're on the woman at the computer. We'll go in claiming to have security clearance until you two can get close enough to your targets for hand-to-hand. Once the guard is down, I'll be on back-up in case a target is missed. Nonlethal methods only, but remember, the first priority is disabling their communication capabilities."

Jack was gazing at her. "Definitely more than just teleports."

Rose just shrugged. "Ready?"

"Wait," whispered the Doctor. "The earpieces, Jack. They work on a local relay?"

Jack nodded. "Yeah, it'll be a grey box on the wall with a blinking red light. Probably close to the computer terminal."

"If I can get to it, I think I can temporarily disable their communications," said the Doctor. "Should only last about twenty seconds, but it should give us a little leeway."

"So we just need to distract them long enough for you to find the relay," murmured Rose.

"Right," said the Doctor. "Don't do anything until I pull out the sonic."

Rose and Jack nodded.

The Doctor adjusted the settings and then slid the screwdriver into his pocket. "Alright, let's do it."

Jack led off. He walked into the room with a swagger designed to attract attention. "Ladies and gentlemen, so sorry I'm late. What have we got here?"

Behind him, Rose and the Doctor branched off, the Doctor moving closer to the desk, and Rose staying to the center of the room, keeping a clear line-of-sight to the guard.

As Jack worked his con on the two techs, the Doctor spotted the relay, just behind the desk, and edged his way over to it. Keeping the sonic in his pocket, he surreptitiously scanned the local comm relay, looking for the right frequency—easier said than done since he had to rely solely on the pitch of the sonic's hum. Almost…almost…there! Quickly, he pulled out the sonic and pointed it at the relay.

The response was immediate. All four of the Torchwood employees winced and grabbed at their earpieces as the disruption signal sent out a burst of static.

Across the room, the guard shook off the effect of the white noise and started to reach for his gun. There was a quick pulsing sound as Rose fired her stun weapon at him. With a dull thud, he fell to the floor.

In the same moment, Jack dispatched with the two techs with a little less elegance, knocking their heads together with a nasty-sounding crack before kneeling to remove their earpieces.

The Doctor grabbed the back of the office chair on which the woman in front of the computer was sitting and used it to drag her backward away from the keyboard. She was shrieking as he yanked her earpiece off, her hands flying up to shove him away. He managed to get it free from her and was about to permanently disable it when he saw movement from the other side of the room.

A second guard had been standing out of sight behind the particle engine. He had torn his earpiece off and was lifting his gun, aiming like a good soldier at the biggest threat in the room—Rose, the one enemy with a weapon.

"Rose," the Doctor shouted, already running toward her, his body automatically propelling itself between her and danger. Across the room, Jack was yelling as he vaulted over the sprawled bodies of the two techs, but the Doctor could tell it was too late—they weren't going to make it in time.

At the sound of their shouts, Rose's head whipped around, and, in what could only be a practiced movement, she ducked and rolled, her shoulder hitting the floor an instant before the shot went off. The momentum carried her forward, back up into a crouch, and she trained her stunner on the guard and fired.

The man's body slumped to the ground as the Doctor reached Rose. He slid to the floor and ran his hands over her, frantically searching for a wound.

"It's ok," she gasped, catching one of his hands. "Doctor, it's alright. It missed me." She squeezed his hand and blew out a breath of air, sending loose strands of blonde hair flying back from her face. "Thanks for the warning, though. Dodged a bullet there. Literally." She tucked her weapon back into her pocket and gave him a grin, her tongue poking out between her front teeth.

Before the Doctor had a chance to respond or even process the enormous surge of relief that she was safe, Rose's expression shifted to horror. Shoving him aside, she leapt to her feet and frantically reached for her weapon. On the other side of the desk, the woman whose earpiece the Doctor had removed was surreptitiously bending over the computer, her hands at the keyboard. Rose took aim and fired, and there was a tremendous crash as the woman pitched forward, knocking the monitor to the floor.

"Fuck," muttered Rose, running forward. "Fuck, fuck, fuck." She rushed around the desk and pulled the woman's body off the keyboard, her profanity getting more and more creative and alien. "Z'thys kwi gensei, did she send out a message? Did she have a chance to send out a message?" She leaned over the desk, looking at the monitor, but it was blank, the screen cracked down the middle.

Rose ran a hand through her hair. "Did you see if she typed anything?" she asked Jack. He shook his head.

"Rose, I don't think she sent anything out," started the Doctor, standing up, but Rose cut him off, eyes blazing.

"Yeah? Well, why the hell did she even have the chance?" she demanded, rounding on him. "She was your target. What exactly was it about the order to neutralize that you didn't understand?"

For the span of one breath, the room was absolutely silent. Then the Doctor spoke in a low voice. "Order, was it?" He met her fury with his own stone cold eyes, the air between them practically vibrating.

Finally, she swallowed and broke eye contact. "Sorry." She folded her arms defensively. "Didn't mean it like that."

The Doctor said nothing, just raised an eyebrow and waited.

"It's just…if she got a warning out," Rose protested. "It's hopeless. We'll be trapped in here."

"Well," said Jack slowly, looking between the two of them warily, "no one's come yet. So that's probably a good sign. Not even after the gunshot," he mused, leaning over to rap his knuckles against the wall. "Solid. They weren't messing around when they built this."

"So," said Rose, a little hesitantly, "shall we, um, seal the other door?"

The Doctor pinched his lips but nodded. "Fine. You check on all of them," he added, nodding toward the unconscious Torchwood staff. He stalked through the doorway to the exit and used the sonic to jam the lock. When he came back into the engine room, Jack and Rose were discussing what to do with the captives.

"Well," said Rose. "Do you think you'll have enough ret-con?"

"Yeah, I think so." After a moment of searching, Jack pulled out a vial of some solution. "Picked up some extra after I realized you two were in the building. Will it be safe to dose them after the stun?"

Rose nodded. "Should be. Go ahead and get it done."

With a quick efficiency, Jack began administering doses to the unconscious people.

"Hold on. What exactly is ret-con?" asked the Doctor.

Jack finished pouring a carefully measured dose into the mouth of one of the techs. "It's just one of Torchwood's little tricks," he said carefully.

"Jack," growled the Doctor. "What are you doing to them?"

"Wiping their memories," said Rose bluntly. "Short-term only. Just enough so that when they wake up, they won't remember what happened today."

The Doctor felt another pang of discomfort—not so much at the idea of the memory wipe, which made perfect sense, honestly, but that, once again, Rose seemed so unaffected. "And you're both all right with this?"

"I am, yes," said Rose as she stripped the earpieces off of the guards.

"Necessary evil," said Jack with a shrug as he moved to the next person. "Especially since I'm here. Torchwood needs me so they let me get away with a lot, but…well, let's put it this way. This sort of thing?" He waved a hand at the unconscious bodies. "I'm thinking they'd probably bring it up at my next performance review."

"Gotta protect the timelines," said Rose, disarming the guards and patting them down for good measure. "Plus, it should keep them all unconscious." She carried the earpieces and the guns over to a free desk and set them down before selecting one of the guns. With a practiced hand, she pulled out the magazine. She glanced up at him. "Time's ticking down. You'd better get to work on the engine, yeah?"

The Doctor nodded but stood there a moment longer, studying the competent way she held the semi-automatic, tucked casually under her arm as she cocked the bolt handle back to eject the remaining cartridge in the barrel and then angled the weapon so she could look down the firing chamber.

Right—it was definitely time to get some answers.

"You know," he said, glancing down at the broken monitor, "I wouldn't mind a quick look at their computer." He nudged it with one toe. "Shame this display's toast."

"There was that other computer in the Lever Room," suggested Jack. "We could go take a look at it, probably access the same system from there."

"Good point," said the Doctor, careful to keep his expression neutral. "You know the system, Jack—why don't you come with me? Rose, you stay here. Somebody needs to keep an eye on these people. Make sure they don't come to and try to escape."

Without waiting for her response, he left the room.

Halfway down the hall, the Doctor glanced back to see Jack following him. "Quite the operation in there," he commented over his shoulder.

"Yeah," said Jack, trotting to catch up. "Listen, you're not worried about the ret-con, are you? Because it's been tested, and it's—"

The Doctor held a hand up. "It's not my biggest worry at the moment."

"Alright," said Jack slowly. "You want to clue me in on what that might be?" When the Doctor didn't answer, he continued. "Because Rose is practically jumping out of her skin, and you've got that look in your eye—the one that usually comes before something gets blown up."

The Doctor turned the corner in the hallway and then stopped. "How long did you say it'd been since you last saw Rose?"

Jack's eyes shifted back the way they'd come, a quick check to make sure they were alone. "More than a century. Well, since I saw the version of her who knew who I was. Might have popped in a few times while she was growing up, just to make sure she was ok and all."

He said the last bit quickly, like he was worried the Doctor would disapprove. But the Doctor just ignored him, staring pensively into the air.

"And you knew her pretty well?"

"Yeah," said Jack. "Very well."

The Doctor looked straight into his eyes. "And how well-versed was she in firearms?"

"Well, back then, she wasn't, but…" As the penny dropped, Jack started shaking his head. "Doc, you don't think there's something wrong with—"

"Don't know what to think," the Doctor interrupted. "But let's go see what we can find out." He turned and continued down the hallway. Together, they walked into the Lever Room.

"See what you can find on the computer," said the Doctor, heading toward the other end of the room.

"Sure thing. What am I looking for?"

"Dunno," said the Doctor absently. There it was again—that strange little tickle, like static in the air. Where was it coming from?

Jack bent over the computer and let out a low whistle. "There's a separate security system on this unit. I should be able to get through it. Might take a minute, though."

Meanwhile, the Doctor was staring at the blank expanse of white wall. It was coming from there, he was sure of it. He reached into his jacket, stretching his fingers into a dimensionally transcendental pocket until he found what he was looking for. He pulled out a pair of 3D glasses and, slipping them down over his eyes, stepped closer to the concrete. "Well now, what's this?"

The sound of Jack's typing stopped. "What's what?"

"There's a breach in space here. A thin crack in the walls of reality." The Doctor pressed his hand against the wall and shivered, the dull ache of nonbeing seeping down his arm.

"Is that a problem?" asked Jack. "Wait, scratch that. Stupid question. Is it a big problem or a little problem?"

The Doctor was silent a moment as he slid his hand over the concrete. "Depends," he said at last. "What are their plans for that particle engine?"

"Let me see if I can pull it up." Jack resumed typing. "No luck—it's encrypted. Do you think you can unscramble it?"

The Doctor turned away from the wall. "Let's see."

Just then, Rose came in. "I double-checked," she said with a hesitant smile. "They're all out cold—" but then she stopped abruptly. She stood just inside the doorway staring at him, frozen in shock.

The Doctor, too, was completely still, staring at Rose with the 3D glasses still perched ridiculously on his nose.

Jack glanced up from the computer. "Rose?" Slowly, he stood up, looking from one of them to the other. "What's wrong?"

The Doctor was silent.

Rose held up her hands to him, pleading. "I promise—it's not what you think."


	13. Chapter 13

_The_ _Lever Room_

From the moment she'd heard those words come out of James Moore's mouth, Rose had been fighting back a feeling of panic. The entire day had been one giant causality nightmare, but this…this was the belly of the damned beast. And the particle engine? Well, naturally it'd have to be here, part and parcel to the whole project. That's just the kind of day she was having.

After the Doctor and Jack had left to go check the computer, she'd stood, just staring at the engine—almost certainly the power source for Torchwood's Ghost Shift. And what the fuck was she supposed to do about that?

If she let the Doctor disable it, would it change the timelines? Would the Battle of Canary Wharf never happen? Would she disappear? Be back with her Doctor? Would her brother never be born? But if it would cause a paradox, surely the Doctor would be able to sense it…right?

So many questions—she would have given anything to be able to ask him for answers, or hey, even some educated guesses would be nice, but the problem was that any question she asked would just spawn five more—the Battle of Canary Wharf, crossing the Void, the Dimension Cannon, the stars going out. And there was no way she was telling him about the Daleks. First of all, it would hurt him terribly. But more importantly, Rose remembered vividly what he had looked like in Van Statten's bunker, gun in hand, snarling at her to step aside so that he could destroy the last enemy standing. This version of him was so fresh off the Time War—if he knew there were Daleks hiding in the Void, or that, in the year 200,100, there was a giant fleet of them circling the Earth, would he even pay attention to the integrity of the timelines?

Yes, she thought immediately and felt the better for it. But somewhere in the back of her mind, a voice was still whispering, _maybe_. And that was enough to make her hold back. Everything was so very fragile, there was so much at stake, and the wrong word in the wrong place and time could be disastrous.

The only option left to her was to try to check subtly that he was sure that this wouldn't cause a paradox and then hope like hell that the timeline was strong enough to handle any alterations. But for that to work, she'd thought as she'd hurried from the engine room to follow the Doctor and Jack, she needed to keep him from discovering Torchwood's plans to enlarge the breach in space/time. She'd figured she'd just have to think up a good distraction.

Well. Bit late for that now.

Stupid, really, not to think of the glasses. Of course he'd have them—same man, same pockets. She'd been focusing on keeping him away from the tech in her bag, completely forgetting the evidence swirling over her body. In her mind, those red and blue lenses belonged alongside pinstripes and converse—it just hadn't occurred to her that they'd end up sitting slightly askew on that daft old face. Sitting there, not quite hiding those ice cold eyes.

Rose took an involuntary step back through the doorway as her stomach twisted. In all their time together, he'd never once looked at her like that.

"It's not what you think," she repeated, hands still raised.

"Not what I think!" The Doctor's voice was explosive in the cement room, and she flinched in response. "You're coated in Void stuff!" He tilted the glasses up and down in his field of vision, shifting between views. "You're practically swimming in it! Are you even human?"

"Yes, of course," she cried. "You don't understand. It's…it's complicated."

"Oh, yes, complicated. I've been hearing that a lot today," he spat. "Too complicated to explain properly. Don't want to give away unnecessary information. I'm beginning to see why."

"Doc, what is it?" Jack asked nervously. "What's Void stuff?" He moved to join the Doctor in the middle of the room.

"The remnants of nonmatter," the Doctor answered. "Found only in the dead space between dimensions." He pulled the glasses off and stuffed them in a pocket, glaring at Jack. "I don't know where your friend is from, but she's not from this universe."

He was advancing on her, one deliberate step at a time, and Rose fought the urge to back away into the hallway.

"Yes, I am!" she insisted. "Jack, tell him!"

Jack frowned. "Look, I don't know what you're seeing, Doc, but Rose is definitely from this universe."

"But how can you be sure that's her?" asked the Doctor roughly as he pulled out the sonic and scanned her. "You said that Rose didn't know about teleport technology. Didn't have military-grade tactical skills. Didn't know how to operate a weapon."

"I've learned a lot—" protested Rose, but the Doctor cut her off.

"And she's clearly working with someone, packing all that glossy tech around. She didn't build it all herself. Isn't that right?" he demanded, turning his attention back to her. "Carefully keeping all those secrets. Only letting out little bits of your research at a time—favorite authors and sock preferences. Just enough to make me think that…" He stopped halfway through his sentence and left that thought unfinished. "And maybe you've even got something in that bag capable of putting out false time traces. You've come well-equipped to deceive me."

Rose shook her head. She didn't quite understand what he was talking about with the time traces and all, but he was still wrong. Frantically, she wracked her brain for some way to convince him. "I never said that I was doing this by myself—"

"The question," continued the Doctor, ignoring her, "is who? Who knows about me, knew that I would be here? Knew about you, too," he added, glancing at Jack.

"You think she's a plant?" said Jack, coming just a bit closer to her, hands slowly drifting toward his jacket pockets in a movement too subtle to be anything but deliberate. "Why her? For what purpose?"

"I'm not!" she shouted. "Jack, you know it's me!" But Jack's face was wary.

"Who better than one of my companions?" The Doctor took another step closer to her. "Someone I would believe without question. Only you messed up," he said, grimly addressing Rose. "You came too early in my timeline, and that, well, that's dangerous. Dangerous because I don't know you yet, don't have that trust." Another step. He was six feet away. "That lets me see clearly. Lets me see you for what you really are."

Rose took a deep breath. "And what am I, Doctor?"

"One way to find out." His face was grim as he moved toward her, lifting one hand up.

Rose instinctively gripped the strap of her pack, thinking that's what he wanted, but no, his hand was too high for that. He was reaching, she suddenly realized, toward her temple.

"Oh, absolutely not," she said, moving back and raising her hands in defense. "Don't you dare."

The Doctor paused and then smirked when she shot a glance down the hallway, looking for an escape. "I wouldn't bother if I were you. There's nowhere to hide, and since you had me seal up the doors, you'd have a hell of a time getting out of here."

Unfortunately, he was right—running wasn't an option. On the other hand, neither was allowing him rifle through her thoughts. Rose had a sickening moment of wondering how Torchwood's hand-to-hand training would stack up against Venusian Aikido.

"Jack," she pleaded. "Please."

"Doctor," said Jack slowly. "Look, maybe we should talk about this. At least give her a chance to explain—"

But there was no change in the Doctor's face, no flicker that might indicate he was going to reconsider, and as he took another step forward, Rose made her choice. In a quick movement, she had her weapon out, and to her surprise, her hand barely trembled as she raised it to aim at him.

The Doctor stopped moving, but he didn't look particularly surprised.

"Rose!" said Jack, his voice ringing with shock.

"It's stun only," she answered grimly, repeating herself for what felt like the hundredth time that day. A quick glance to the ammo meter told her that she still had plenty of rounds left. _More than enough to do some damage_, she thought, feeling numb. To the side, she saw Jack shift his weight again, and she started calculating whether she would be able to take them both down, if necessary. But then what?

"Are you going to shoot me?" the Doctor asked calmly, eyebrows only slightly raised. He shook his head nearly imperceptibly at Jack when he started to reach for a weapon.

Rose kept her own weapon steady, brought up her other hand to brace it. "Are you going to try to read my mind?"

The Doctor's eyes never left hers. "Yes."

Rose ran the razor's edge of her teeth over her lip and felt the bite of pain keep her sharp. "Y'know, in just a bit over twenty-four hours from now, linear time, you're gonna take me to the year five billion to watch the end of the world. I'm going to ask you why all the aliens speak English, and you're gonna explain about the TARDIS, about how it gets inside your head to translate. I'm gonna be angry," she said with a half-laugh. "Angry at you for not asking permission first." She tightened her grip on her gun. "In retrospect, I'm a bit more annoyed about this."

"I need answers," he replied simply.

"You don't," she snapped. "Not everything, anyway. Look, I'll tell you what I can." _Damage control_, she thought. She could tell him just enough for damage control. And then…

"I don't see why I should trust you," said the Doctor, interrupting her thoughts. "You're the one who's lied. I need to know who and what you are. And now you're standing there, pointing a gun at me."

The implication of that hung in the air, and Rose swallowed hard. She could remember saying something similar to him years ago, down in that bunker, when he'd been the one with the weapon. She'd known, deep down, that he wouldn't shoot her then, and she wasn't sure she could actually pull the trigger now.

The Doctor continued with a hint of a smirk in his voice, the same one she'd heard used a thousand times on despotic dictators and the like. "Of course, if you do shoot me and Jack, you're going to have a bit of a problem. You've been trying to get me out of Torchwood and away from that particle engine all day, so my guess is you don't want to leave us here. And if you could have teleported us out with your tech, you'd have tried it earlier. You can't lug both of our bodies through the building without attracting unwanted attention. You're running out of options."

He crossed his arms over his chest. "Now are you going to shoot me or not? Because if you are, I'd say that answers some questions right there."

He was right. Damn him, he was right, just like he was always right—she wouldn't be able to stop him like this, not with a gun, and he was never going to listen to her while she had it trained on him. But if traveling with the Doctor had taught her one thing, it was that there were always other options.

And she had other weapons.

"No." Rose let her hands drop to her sides. "No, I'm not going to shoot you."

The Doctor stepped forward, a look of triumph on his face. But just as he lifted his hand, fingers reaching toward her temple, Rose closed her eyes and spoke again.

"I…I don't consent."

The Doctor paused. "What?"

She took a deep breath and spoke each word slowly, with deliberation. "I don't consent. To the telepathy, the mindmeld, whatever you want to call it. I don't consent to it."

Opening her eyes and glancing up, she saw a quick twist to his lips, a cold little half-smile.

"Do you really think that's going to stop me?"

Her answer was quick. "Yeah. Yeah, I do."

The Doctor made a noise of disdain, and Rose could feel the tip of a finger brush her hair. Just in case, she tossed up every bit mental defense Torchwood's basic psychic training had afforded her.

Her voice shook. "Because I know you. You don't know me yet, but I…" she swallowed, "I know you. You wouldn't do this, Doctor. Not to me." Shaking her head accidentally bumped her temple against his fingers, and she immediately shrunk away from the contact. "Not if I said no."

For the first time, his composure waivered, and his hand dropped an inch. "You don't know what I'm capable of."

"Yes, I do." She reached up and grabbed his hand in hers. "I know everything. I know about the Time Lords." His fingers tightened on hers. "I know about the Daleks." Her voice dropped so that it was hardly more than a whisper. "Doctor, I know about Gallifrey, and the Time War, all of it. I know what you had to do." She let her weapon fall to the floor and lifted her hand to stroke his cheek. "I know what you lost."

His face was still so hard, but there were tears forming on the edge of his eyelashes, and his hand was trembling in hers.

"And not because I'm trying to trick you or anything. I know it because you told me, bit by bit. First trip out, like I said, we go see the end of the world. Afterwards, you tell me who you are and that you're alone. We go get chips together, and maybe…" She let out a breath. "Maybe you start thinking you're not so alone as you'd thought."

The look on his face was giving way to something raw, naked, desperate, and Rose tightened her grip on his hand, willing him to believe her, to believe in her. There were things she couldn't tell him, things she _shouldn't_ tell him, but she would give him everything else.

"On our second trip, you aim for Naples and hit Cardiff. It's Christmas Eve, 1869, and we meet Charles Dickens. When we get back to the TARDIS, we sit in the library, and you read me The Signalman. I fall asleep halfway through. We go sightseeing in the Perseus Cluster for a few days, and when you take me back home to grab some clothes, we get there a year late, my mum slaps you, and then you, me, and Harriet Jones blow up 10 Downing Street together."

"Ah, that'd be the first run-in with Margaret of the Slitheen," said Jack nostalgically. He had relaxed his flanking position and was now half-sitting, half-leaning on a stack of timber. "Wonder whatever happened to her in her new life."

The Doctor ignored him. "Is that why the alias?" His voice was rough, but the anger in it was dissipating. "Harriet Jones? I'd wondered—not the best choice for going undercover, that, even if she's not the Prime Minster yet." He relaxed his arm, let their hands drop down, but he didn't let go of her.

"Well, sorry," Rose answered, rolling her eyes even through the wave of relief because he was listening, really listening. "Not everyone can come up with an alias on the spot as brilliant as John Smith—wait." She stopped, puzzled. "You know who she is? Harriet Jones?"

She could remember it clearly: _Harriet Jones, _he'd mused, pacing around the Cabinet room in 10 Downing Street. _Harriet Jones…where've I heard that name before?_

Even through the grief still written across his features, the Doctor managed to look slightly affronted at having his knowledge of history questioned. "Yeah, of course I do. Harriet Jones, Prime Minister of Britain's Golden Age. Why wouldn't I know it?"

"It's just…when we first met her, she was just an MP for Flydale North, and you didn't recognize her. You said the name was familiar, but you didn't remember she was going to be the Prime Minister until, well, until after we blew up the building."

His face suddenly cleared. "Oh. Oh. That makes sense." When Rose just looked at him blankly, he elaborated. "Makes sense, if I blocked the memory of today, us meeting like this, you using that name. I told you, blocking memories is risky, and this is why. Sometimes little associated facts fall through the cracks and get lost."

He paused, his eyes searching her face, but Rose just stared back, perplexed.

"How can that be? No, wait." Her brow wrinkled as she tried to sort it all out. "Was this supposed to happen, or did it already happen, or however you say it? Us meeting here today?" She blew out a breath. "I hate temporal mechanics. Is it a paradox? Or a whaddacallit, time loop?"

"Well," he answered, and Rose could tell that he was shifting into lecture mode, "there really isn't a "supposed to be" version of any timeline. There are events with higher probability vertices, and certainly some things are fixed—or rather, they take place on such a large number of temporal channels that to alter them would irreparably damage the predominant timeline and therefore the fabric of reality. Timeline itself isn't really a very good description, since time really isn't all that linear. It's more like a tangle or a ball with pieces shifting about."

"So," she said with as straight a face as she could muster, "what you're saying is that it's all sort of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, then?"

His brow wrinkled. "I s'pose, but that's sort of a daft way of putting it."

One slightly hysterical giggle broke through, and Rose pressed her fingers of her free hand to her lips to calm herself. "Well," she said, taking a deep breath, "does that mean I get a chance to explain all this?" She waved her free hand up and down herself, indicating the invisible Void particles.

There was a long pause during which the Doctor didn't move a muscle, and Rose held her breath, waiting for the verdict.

And then, finally, he nodded. "Alright."

Rose exhaled. "Thanks." She let go of his hand and picked up her weapon off the floor. Tucking it into her pack, she glanced around the room. "Maybe we should go sit by the computer? Jack, you could check their records and verify at least some of what I've got to say."

"Sure, Rose," he answered with a bit of an apologetic smile. He hopped off the timber and went to take a seat at the desk, Rose and the Doctor following behind.

The Doctor leaned against the wall in between the two windows and nodded at her to begin.

Resting on the edge of the desk, Rose took a deep breath.

"I'm sorry for lying to you. Both of you. I didn't want to, but you were right, Doctor—I don't know what I'm doing. Most of the time, I don't have a clue. So I do my best to be careful.

"I am from this universe, but yeah—I've traveled across the Void. A lot. The first time was with you and the TARDIS, actually. We traveled to this parallel world by accident once, after you were gone, Jack. The TARDIS fell through a crack in the dimensional walls."

She continued, telling them about Cybus Industries and the Cybermen. About Rickey and Mickey and Jake and Pete Tyler.

"Mickey decided to stay in that world. We got home in the end though, you and me. And we were together for quite awhile after that. At least until we ran into Torchwood.

"The last time I saw you, Doctor—saw you properly, I mean—was in this room. We had landed in London, 2007. We were coming to visit my mum, actually" she added with a little smile, but the Doctor's face remained impassive.

"Anyway, while we were there, we found that Torchwood was using this same particle engine as part of a device designed to tap into the energy flowing from the spatial disturbance. And you can check that," she added with a nod to Jack and the computer. "They've probably got their plans all documented. Anyway, by the time we arrived, it had been going on for months. You knew you had to close the breech, and we tried to fix it, but…but it didn't work out quite right. The details aren't really important, but there was an accident, and I ended up on the other side, in that same parallel world, when the walls closed. I've been trapped in that other dimension for years now."

She hesitated, just for a moment. "And…and you're right. I'm not working alone. There's a Torchwood in that universe, too—a better one than this one, with Pete Tyler at the head. They're the ones helping me." It was silly to be nervous, she thought. If the later version of him hadn't objected to her working for Torchwood at Bad Wolf Bay, he'd hardly care about it now, before he'd ever seen them release millions of Daleks into the world. But she couldn't quite help it.

As expected, the Doctor just shrugged. "But how is it that you're here? So this other Torchwood's helping you. Interdimensional travel should still be impossible. The walls should be closed."

"Yeah, that's what you said before. Or will say later, whatever. Thing is," she said, tugging at the hem of her jacket to straighten it, "the walls between dimensions are breaking down. There are cracks, and some of them are just big enough to let a person through."

The Doctor was silent as he digested that information, and Rose wished she could know what was going through his mind.

Jack suddenly spoke up. "You're traveling through without a capsule? Across time, space, _and_ dimensions?" He shook his head. "I've done unshielded time travel—it's not pretty, and I've been trained for it. That should do a number on you physically."

Rose nodded. "Yah, it did, but I've got a…" She paused and looked up toward the ceiling, trying to remember. "Pychogenic Analgesic Interceptor Node implanted at the base of my brain stem."

"Nice anagram," said Jack with a grin.

She shrugged. "Seemed appropriate. A handy little chip, allows me to adjust, through a series of mental commands, the amount of pain that I'm capable of feeling."

"Dangerous," muttered the Doctor.

"Which part?" asked Rose.

"All of it," he growled, straightening up. "The chip is enough on its own—the body gives pain signals for a reason, keeps you from damaging yourself. But the dimensional jumps! And not just what could happen to you if you make a mistake. Do you have any idea the damage you could be doing to the fabric of the multiverse?"

"Some idea, yeah," she answered, unrepentant, looking him straight in the eye. "We do our best to be very, very careful. But the thing is, we have to take the risk. Because Doctor," she took another deep breath, because this was the real test. "Something terrible is happening. Darkness is coming, and the stars are going out. And not just in that universe—in every universe. We think that's what's causing the damage to the dimensional walls. Something is destroying everything, everywhere. Erasing all of reality."

He just looked at her, but Rose thought she could detect a bit of that same disbelief. She reached for his hand.

"I've seen it, Doctor, with my own eyes. Parallel after parallel with skies going dark. And we've measured it, too." She let go of him and shifted to reach into her pack. "I've got a…a causality meter, here." She took the device out and passed it to him, trying not to fidget when he pulled out the sonic to scan it. "It forms a chronometric bridge between here and the Dimension Cannon, which allows us to get a better map of the timelines.

"Actually, when I get back, that'll be the first thing we look at. We've been desperate for the data that we're going to get from this jump. Because, here's the thing—before we were able to get the transportation part of the Dimension Cannon working properly, we managed to sort of…ping this universe, just once. We got a sample of the timelines. And Doctor, there's a certain point at which the timelines, they just…end. They don't converge in a fixed point or break off into other parallels; they just collapse right out of existence." She took a deep breath. "All but one."

The Doctor gave an involuntary shudder, as though the idea of that was hideous, so much so that he didn't want to believe it. "And how many timelines were in your sample?"

She didn't blink. "Millions."

"That's nothing," he scoffed, but he still looked like he was trying to shake off the horror of it. "Out of the whole of causality? Drop in the bucket."

"I know. But it's the same on every parallel. The stars are going out, and the timelines just…die."

"What's causing it?" asked Jack, looking up from the computer.

Rose shook her head. "We don't know. We don't know how to fix it, either. There are all sorts of weird readings we've gotten from it, but Doctor," she said, "I'm there. In the timeline that survives, one thing we know for sure is that you and I both have to be there.

"Now it's possible," she added, swallowing, "that there are other eventualities, other possible timelines that we don't know about, that manage to survive the destruction, and maybe for some of those, I don't have to be there. But every piece of data that we have to work with says that I do."

She stopped herself from twisting the ring on her finger and looked the Doctor straight in the eye. "And here's the thing—I don't think we can destroy that particle engine—not without changing the timeline."

The Doctor was silent for a long moment. Then he shook his head. "Let's say I believe you. Maybe everything you say is true. But the fact remains that the engine too dangerous to leave intact."

Rose raked her fingers through her hair. "But…but…the paradox!"

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Destroying it won't cause a paradox. That's what I keep trying to tell you—I'd be able to tell if it would."

"That engine has to be here, completely functional, when they start testing in 2007!" she shouted, exasperated. "So unless you're planning on just breaking it only a little bit—"

"But Rose," interrupted Jack, "they have the testing schedule right here." He swiveled the computer screen around. "They're scheduled to start testing in three and a half months."


	14. Chapter 14

_You mustn't interfere with the past. Don't do anything that affects anything. Unless it turns out that you were supposed to do it; in which case, for the love of God, don't not do it!_

- Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth, on the inherent risks of time travel

* * *

Frowning, Rose approached the monitor. "That's not right," she muttered. "It couldn't possibly have taken them two years to get it up and running." She reached the desk and twisted the monitor toward her to get a better look.

"I'm telling you, they are." Jack leaned over and tapped the screen. "Look right here—that's the master work schedule. Estimated completion date is in September, with projected full ROI in February of next year."

"But how can that be? I'm positive about the dates, Doctor—they definitely don't start the experimentation until 2007. Is there a glitch in their plans that would cause the delay?"

"Yeah," answered the Doctor with a little half-smile on his face. "Us."

"Oh." Rose thought about it. "So does that mean we only damage the engine? They'll be able to repair it?"

The Doctor shook his head. "Trust me—after seeing the sort of thing that this lot gets up to, I'm not leaving that engine intact. Jack, check the file and see if they've got an alternative to the power source lined up."

Jack shifted the monitor back and started searching. "Ahh. Yeah, they do." He leaned in closer as he read aloud from the file. "'Suspected alien vessel fell into the Pacific Ocean five months ago; infrared scanners showed high probability of particle accelerator technology; craft retrieval schedule estimates eighteen months to acquire and properly retrofit the device. Because of length of projected delays, this option deemed subpar.'"

"But," said Rose, staring at the monitor, "so they get another engine—isn't that just as dangerous? Why would we bother destroying this one?"

The Doctor leaned over and commandeered the mouse and keyboard from Jack. A few clicks later, he'd located the detailed schematics. He was silent for a moment as he scanned it. "There." He indicated the infrared data. "You see?"

Jack frowned at it for a moment, and then his face cleared. "Oh. Yeah, that does make a difference."

"What is it?" asked Rose. "What's the difference?"

"That," said Jack, pointing a finger at a cloudy red blob with a slightly brighter oval on one side. "That's the engine, and they're right—it's a particle accelerator drive. But you see the way these heat signatures are dispersed? That means the engine is core-framed with duel exothermic heat sinks, and that's not something you're going to see on a Paxtril cruiser. My guess is this is probably a Sevralian ship."

"And that's good?" she asked, glancing back and forth between the two of them.

"Sevralian technology is much higher quality—better engine shielding, for one thing," explained the Doctor. "And a hell of a lot more fail-safes. If Torchwood makes a mistake while they're poking at it, they might level the building, but they won't take out this part of the hemisphere."

Rose took a deep breath. "So basically I've been worried all day for nothing."

"Yeah," said the Doctor.

"Pretty much," agreed Jack.

"OK," said Rose, nodding slowly, "my mistake." She looked at both of them, sitting there waiting for her reaction. "Well then, what are we waiting for? Let's go blow the thing up."

The Doctor's face split into a manic grin, so achingly familiar that Rose had to turn away, blinking her eyes. He pushed off the wall, moving with the bubbling energy that he only got when the difficult questions had been resolved, when _doing_ was the only thing left, and God help anybody who stood in his way.

Oh, she had missed it so much.

Jack hopped up from the computer chair. "What do we need to do first, Doc?"

The Doctor was already striding across the room. "I need to drain the charge out of the ionic fuel first. That way, the ignition system won't cause a catastrophic chain reaction. It'll take a bit longer than what I'd originally planned to do, but after seeing this place," he waved a hand at Torchwood at large, "I think it's for the best that we get rid of the engine entirely. While I'm doing that, you'd both better start moving all the people in here—that way, they'll be well clear of the blast radius."

"How long will it take to finish what you need to do?" asked Rose, following the Doctor down the hallway, trotting to keep up. "What time is it now?"

Hurrying along beside her, Jack checked his watch. "It's 6:34."

"Don't worry, we'll make it." The Doctor rounded the corner toward the engine room. "Well. Might be a little tight. But I'm sure we can get out in time."

Striding through the doors, the Doctor made a beeline right for the engine and immediately got to work. Together, Jack and Rose started hauling the limp forms of the Torchwood staff back to the Lever Room.

On their second trip, Jack had one of the guards slung over his shoulder, and Rose was pushing one of the scientists along on an office chair. As they passed the door that the Doctor had sealed shut, the handle rattled. A moment later, there was the dull thump-thump of a fist banging on the door.

"Jack," said Rose, freezing. "Is it the sweep?"

Jack's face was grim. "Maybe not the sweep, but somebody's figured out that we've got this place locked down. Doctor," he called, "we've got problems."

"I heard," the Doctor called back, still working on the engine.

"C'mon," said Rose anxiously, "let's finish getting these people moved, at least."

She and Jack quickly hauled their cargo to the Lever Room and gently settled the guard and the scientist on the floor next to the other unconscious people. As they made the final trip with the last guard slung between them, they heard thumping on other sealed door.

"Are you armed, Jack?" Rose asked quietly. "If not, we've got those guns from the guards. I know the Doctor won't like it, but I don't see how we're going to get out of here without a fight."

Jack nodded. "Agreed. And yeah, I've got a weapon. Let's go check on the Doctor and find out how much time he's going to need."

They lay the guard down with the others and ran back down the hall to the engine room. The Doctor had several parts of the engine spread out around him. A bunch of wires stretched across the floor from the machinery to the wall where they were wrapped around one of the exposed steel I-beams that was supporting the ceiling. Rose and Jack carefully stepped over the bits and pieces.

The Doctor was kneeling, reaching with one arm almost up to the shoulder inside the particle engine. "Hang on," he said, grimacing. "I've almost got this."

"We've got to do something quick," said Jack. "They've figured out that the doors are locked, and I bet they've tried to raise the guards on the comm. Next step will be to cut through the doors."

"If they get through before you can finish, we'll have to try to hold them off," said Rose, eyeing the engine room doorway and the windows that looked out into the hall. "It'll be tricky though—the windows are reinforced, but once they get through them, we're out of luck. And either way, I'm not sure how we'll get back to the TARDIS."

"Oh, I've got a plan for that," said the Doctor, still peering intently into the inner workings of the particle engine. "Jack, do you think you could get me patched into the comm? Get me access to their central communication line, I mean."

"Maybe," said Jack thoughtfully. "Where are the earpieces?"

"Over here," supplied Rose, fishing one out from the pile. She handed it to Jack. "What are you going to do?" she asked the Doctor as Jack took the earpiece over to the comm relay and got to work.

"Gonna kill two with one stone." He was silent for a moment, directing the sonic at a particularly fussy connection. "This engine," he began after he had finished the tricky bits, "will explode with about as much force as a grenade once I'm finished with it. Which would be enough to mess up the room but not enough to bring down the roof. But, if the energy of the explosion is focused correctly," he paused again, pulling out a small component and reattaching its wiring, "it should be able to punch a hole through cement."

"So we're going out through the wall?"

"That's the idea."

Rose chewed her lip. "And if it isn't focused correctly?"

He looked up at her, aggrieved. "It will be." Just then, one of the connections sparked, and he gasped and stuck one of his fingers in his mouth.

"Oi, have a care with the explosives," said Rose, her hand automatically going to his shoulder. "You alright?"

The Doctor gave a quick glance at her fingers spread over his leather jacket and grinned. "Yeah. All according to plan. We'll go through the wall, down the hall, and straight to the TARDIS. If Jack can get me on the comm, that is. We'll need to give them a heads up, make sure everyone is clear of the blast zone."

He clicked the component back into place and looked up. "Jack. How're we doing?"

"Almost there," Jack answered. "You should have access to the command communications line—you'll be able to override the other channels. Basically," he added as he brought the earpiece back over to the Doctor, "you'll be heard by everybody in the building."

"Perfect." The Doctor finished whatever alterations he was making to the particle engine and stood up, dusting his hands off. He took the earpiece from Jack and slid it into place.

"Hello, Torchwood," he said cheerfully. "I'm up here with your particle engine, and I was wondering, would you mind if we chat for a mo'?"

He stood there, waiting patiently for the chatter on the line to die down, and then Rose and Jack heard the unmistakable sound of someone asking, "_Who is this?"_

Rose shook her head vehemently at him.

The Doctor rolled his eyes at her, but answered, "Your aunt Mildred, who d'you think? Anyhow, I was just happening by and noticed that you happen to be in possession of a dangerous bit of alien technology."

The voice on the other end began to squawk, and the Doctor rolled his eyes again. "Oh, I believe me, I know all about the risks of playing around with this. A mite better than you do, I think. Now, I'm guessing that you probably don't want to kill half your species, so I thought I'd do you a little favor and dismantle it. It's going to be a bit of a mess, though—you're going to want to evacuate all personnel from the west side of this floor. Well, west and north both would be best. Immediately." He paused for a moment. "Did you get that?"

There was a moment of silence, and then the voice started chattering angrily. The Doctor pulled the earpiece off and switched it to mute.

"They're not too happy, but do you think they'll listen about getting the people out?" he asked Jack.

Jack nodded. "Probably. They're really big on personnel safety. Doesn't mean they'll stop trying to get in here, though." He glanced back at the sealed door in the hallway as the muffled sound of whirring machinery started up. "For instance, I think they're trying to cut through that door."

"Right." The Doctor pulled out the sonic and started scanning the engine. "We're almost ready—just need a few more minutes for the last of the charge to disperse. Jack, you go get anything you can to block that door. Rose, drag any furniture you can find, tables and desks and such, and pile 'em up in the corner over there. The room's big enough that we should be ok, but we're still going to want something to hide behind when the explosion goes off."

As the Doctor turned his attention back to putting the final touches on the engine, Jack ran off in the direction of the Lever Room, and Rose started shoving papers, lamps, and whatnot off the top of the two desks in the room. She dragged them, two filing cabinets, a bookshelf, and an office chair into the corner of the room and constructed a make-shift bomb shelter, enough to protect them from some of the debris at least.

Out in the hallway, she saw Jack return, pushing and pulling an office chair in either hand, both of them piled up with cement blocks from the Lever Room. He started stacking them in front of the hallway door, working fast as sparks started to fly out of the sealed lock. Rose ran over to give him a hand.

"Here," said Jack, quickly dumping the rest of the blocks on the floor. "Get these ones into position. I'll go grab another load."

Arms aching, Rose hauled the cement blocks into position. A minute later, Jack returned with more, and together, they built up enough of a barricade to at least slow down their pursuers.

"Probably good enough," panted Jack, stretching out his fingers painfully. "What do you say we use the rest of these to protect us from the explosion?" When Rose nodded, he pushed an office chair into the engine room.

Rose followed him in and shut the door, flipping the bolt to lock it. "They're almost through that door handle," she reported.

Jack was stacking the rest of the cement blocks in front of the desks. "We ready to go yet, Doc?"

"Yep." The Doctor popped the earpiece back on. "Alright, hello there, back again. So…where do we stand on your people getting evacuated?" There was some very noisy and emphatic squawking, but the Doctor just smirked. He gestured for Rose and Jack to get behind the shelter, and then flipped a couple of connections on the engine.

"You know," he said conversationally, "it'd be a better strategy to beg another ten minutes or so, claim you need more time to get your people to safety. Telling me you don't negotiate with terrorists is just a tip-off. But good to know everybody's out." He ran the sonic over the wall just to be sure and nodded at the results.

Outside in the hallway, there was a clang as the door handle fell to the floor, and there were the rattling sounds of the Torchwood security personnel shoving the door against the barricade.

"Well, time to go. Nice chat and all. Be seeing you." The Doctor pulled off the earpiece and tossed it to the floor as he hurried to join Rose and Jack behind the shelter. Just before he ducked down to squeeze under one of the desks with them, he pointed the sonic at the engine and activated it. "Cover your ears," he advised and knelt down beside them.

_Thousand one…thousand two…_

_Boom!_ The floor shook as the engine and wall exploded with tremendous force. Even behind the wall of concrete blocks, Rose felt it like a punch to the gut as the shockwave knocked the air from her lungs. She dropped her hands to the floor and worked to suck in a breath, and to her side, she could hear Jack doing likewise. In the aftermath of the explosion, the desk shelter shuddered as the bits of rubble and engine rained down.

As the debris cleared, the Doctor reached down to take Rose's hand. "Time to go," he said, tugging her out from under the desk. Jack followed along behind.

The room was a mess—bits of engine and cement everywhere. Coughing, Rose tried to wave the dust away from her face. "I thought you said you could focus it on the wall," she said and then shook her head, trying to clear the ringing in her ears.

"I did," protested the Doctor, pulling her toward the newly made hole. "Where'd you think this nice, new egress came from?" He paused with some satisfaction by the smoldering mass of twisted metal that used to be a particle accelerator engine from a Paxtril C-class short range cruiser. "That's not going to be of much use to anybody," he said, nudging it with his foot.

"Let's get moving," said Jack, glancing back at the door, "while we still have the chance."

"And hope that they haven't found the TARDIS yet," added Rose, as she started climbing through the hole in the wall.

They scrambled over the fallen debris and broken bits of furniture and made their way down the corridor leading to the room with the TARDIS. The route back to the ship ended up being somewhat time-consuming as they had to duck into a spare room to avoid a squad of soldiers sent to investigate the aftermath of the explosion. Fortunately, though, the TARDIS had remained undiscovered, and they were able to reach it without further trouble.

Once they were all through the doors, Rose breathed a sigh of relief.

"Everybody onboard?" The Doctor clapped his hands together and then flipped the lever to start the dematerialization sequence. "And we're off!"

Jack and Rose grabbed the railings as the TARDIS made the quick jump across London.

They landed at 7:26 in an alleyway just across the street from Henrik's. As the TARDIS stabilized, the Doctor turned to Rose.

"You said there was an explosion. How big?"

"I dunno. Big." She drummed her fingers, trying to remember. "Top couple floors of the building, I s'pose."

The Doctor glanced at Jack. "We're a bit short on time. I'm going to need your help."

"No problem," said Jack with a nod. "Do you have what we'll need?"

"I think so." The Doctor hurried out of the console room with Jack on his heels.

Rose trailed along behind. "I don't understand," she said, following them to one of the storage cupboards. "What do you need us to do?"

The Doctor and Jack were both rooting around through the piles of junk heaped on the shelves or stuffed in bins. "You two are going to set up the explosives," the Doctor answered, pulling out a piece of random equipment and dropping it unceremoniously to the floor, "while I go distract the Autons, make sure everyone else is out of the building, and rescue the younger-you."

"Oh, here we go," said Jack, enthusiasm coloring his voice. He pulled out a large string of what looked like alien Christmas lights—big white bulbs strung on a long, green wire. "HPE—that's Hypertridex plastacide explosives," he added for Rose's sake. "Nice and stable; good blast radius. Should do the job."

The Doctor ran his hands over the line, checking out the connections. "Perfect. You've used HPE before?" he asked Jack. When the other man confirmed, the Doctor nodded. "Alright then. Let's go."

"Wait," objected Rose as the two men started to push past her. "That's not right."

"What's not?" asked Jack.

"That's not the bomb you used," she said. "You waved it around at me. It was little and square…" She started to look around the cupboard for it, scrunching up her forehead in an effort to remember what it looked like.

"Rose, I don't think it matters," objected the Doctor. "A tiny difference won't do any harm, and we've got to get moving. We're running out of time."

"But you held it up," she insisted, lifting up the lid of one of the bins. "You told me you were going to blow up the relay and maybe yourself along with it and that I should run for my life. It had a little clock on it and…there!" She spotted it sitting on a shelf behind a big loop of black cable, and she scrambled over a pile of discarded electronics to reach it. "This is it," she said, gingerly lifting the little box up for them to see. "Shouldn't we use it instead?"

The Doctor and Jack both stared at the device in her hands and then glanced at each other.

"What?" Rose demanded. They were clearly trying not to laugh.

"Rose, it's just…" said Jack, fighting a grin.

"That's an Mbruvian alarm clock," said the Doctor bluntly, and they both started snickering.

Rose looked back and forth between the two of them. "But it's…it's all…" She stared at the device in her hands. "Now wait just a second." She scowled at the pair of them. "This isn't an alarm clock. It's all…wired up and taped together."

"Ah, the Mbruvia," said Jack nostalgically. "They have no sense of design. But they're great at parties." He hoisted the coil of HPE over his shoulder and started for the door, still chuckling.

"But why on Earth did you tell me you were going to blow up the relay with an alarm clock?" Rose asked the Doctor, still confused.

The Doctor plucked the device out of her hands. "Because," he said with a ridiculous grin, "_you_ just told me to." He trotted after Jack.

"But…but that doesn't make any sense. Doctor," she called, slightly frustrated.

"Wibbley-wobbly," he called back.

"Timey-wimey, right," she muttered, following them both. "Bloody hell." But she still cracked a little smile. An alarm clock. Honestly.

She stepped out of the TARDIS doors and found herself on a sidewalk one block over from Henrik's. The Doctor and Jack were already crossing the street, and Rose ran to catch up.

"OK," said the Doctor as he led them to the alleyway alongside the store, "here's the plan. You two head up to the roof and rig up the explosives while I go rescue Rose the Younger. You know how to set the detonation remote?" he asked Jack, who gave a quick nod. "Good."

The Doctor reached up and pulled down the fire escape ladder. "Once you're done, get back down into the alleyway. You should be out of sight here—" and he glanced at Rose for conformation. She nodded. "—and I'll meet you here once I'm sure there's no one else in the building. Don't detonate the explosives until I get here, no matter what, and don't set a foot out of this alleyway. Understood?"

"Yes, sir!" said Jack, snapping to a salute.

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "Alright then, up you go."

Jack began climbing the ladder. Rose waited until he reached the first landing before putting her foot onto the first rung.

The Doctor lingered a moment, watching them. "Rose."

She glanced down him as she started to climb. "Shouldn't you be getting to the basement, Doctor?"

He nodded and then placed a hand lightly on her ankle. "Take care with the explosives, Rose," he said softly.

She paused and looked down into his eyes, shining blue even in the dim light. "I will." She smiled, something small and delicate just between the two of them, and he smiled back in turn before letting her go.

Once she made it to the roof, Rose found Jack already spreading out the HSE line next to a large metal box, which she assumed was the alien device. "Here," he said, handing her one end, "help me wrap it around the relay. Don't worry," he added when she hesitated. "HSE is very stable. You can't set it off by moving it around."

Taking him at his word, Rose dragged the wires around the relay. Jack laid another line down going in the opposite direction. They continued, placing more and more line around the relay until they reached the end of the coil. Then Jack knelt down and started fusing the connections together.

Rose stood back and watched him work. "Jack," she said after a moment, "if you do see him—before I get back, I mean—you can't tell him. Every jump, every change alters the timelines, and we just don't know how stable the surviving one will be."

Jack paused, a connector in each hand. "I know," he said softly. "That," he added as he snapped a connector into place, "is why I'm going to ask him to block the memory of today."

"I…I wouldn't have asked you to…"

"I know." He smiled ruefully. "I'm not looking forward to it myself. But if there's that much at stake, we can't risk the potential contamination. Not for the sake of the memory of a little reunion adventure." He scooted over and inspected a little panel of blinking lights on the HPE line. Then he pulled the activation switch out of his pocket.

Rose watched him sync the detonator with the switch. "I meant it when I said that I'd make him come find you, Jack."

Jack was silent for a moment, watching as the little lights blink in unison. The device beeped once, and, straightening up, he pocketed it. "I know, Rose," he said at last. Standing up, he smiled. "All done. Shall we go back down?

Rose nodded. "Yeah. He's got to be almost done by now."

Together, they clambered down the fire escape. As Rose's feet hit the pavement of the alleyway, the Doctor came hurrying around from the back of the building.

"Did it go OK?" Rose asked nervously. "Did you get me out?"

He nodded. "Yep, you're off to have your lovely beans on toast." Then he grinned. "Students? Really?" he teased as Jack passed him the detonation switch.

Rose rolled her eyes. "Yeah, 'cause shop window dummies suddenly come to life makes a lot more sense."

The Doctor chuckled. "S'pose not. 'Sides, I'm one to talk—I almost forgot to ask you your name."

He checked the settings on the detonator and then moved to look out of the entrance to the alleyway. Rose and Jack followed him, keeping to the a moment, Rose spotted her younger self run across the street, still clutching the plastic arm.

The Doctor winced. "Oh, probably shouldn't have let you take that home with you."

Rose laughed silently, remembering the fate of her mother's favorite coffee table. "Nah, all according to plan. You've got to have a reason to stop by in the morning, after all." She glanced at the detonator. "That thing ready?"

"Yep. Here," said the Doctor, unlocking a door to the next building over. "Let's just pop in here. We're low enough to be out of the blast radius, and the wall will protect us from debris and such." Once they were all safely inside, he closed the door. "Alright, here goes," he said, waggling his eyebrows. "Explosion Number Two."

With a quick flip of a switch, he detonated the HPE. There was a tremendous bang and a rumbling sound as the building shuddered. After a moment, the sounds of falling concrete and debris died away, and the muffled sounds of sirens and car alarms started up.

"Well," said Jack cheerfully, "that's all taken care of. You two want to go get some dinner?"


	15. Chapter 15

_Once upon a time I was an ocean_

_But now I'm a mountain range_

_Something unstoppable set into motion_

_Nothing is different, but everything's changed_

- Paul Simon, Once Upon A Time There Was An Ocean

"_Well," said Jack cheerfully, "that's all taken care of. You two want to go get some dinner?"_

Rose laughed, giddy with the knowledge that it was finally all over—the Doctor was safe, and the timelines were safe, and they were all out of Torchwood. She shook her head regretfully. "I really shouldn't. Control starts to get nervous if the jumps take too long. And it's been…" She set her pack down and started to search through it. "What…about eight hours or so? I just have to check to see if the…" she trailed off, her mouth hanging open for a moment. And then, "Oh, fuck!"

"Problem?" asked Jack.

"What is it?" asked the Doctor.

Rose straightened up, aggrieved. She was clutching a device in her hand—the TURT. "Bloody hell! I never set the date and time on this thing! It's only done its initial transmission." She inputted the necessary information and watched while the TURT calculated the estimated time to completion. When it beeped, she groaned.

"How much longer do you have to wait?" asked the Doctor.

Rose snorted and stuck the TURT back into her pack. "Five and a half hours. Of course. Don't know why I even bothered to check." She leaned back and thumped her head against the wall. "Do you ever have one of those days when the synchronicity of the universe just really starts to drive you spare?"

"From time to time," answered the Doctor mildly.

"So," said Jack, looking back and forth between them, "does this mean we're on for dinner?"

.-.-.-.-.

A short while later, the TARDIS landed in Cardiff, after Jack confirmed that his team had gone home for the night. He led the way to a little bistro on the Mermaid Quay—not quite the same place that they had gone years ago, or would go years in the future (depending on the perspective), but it was good nonetheless, with hot chips and cold pints and excellent company.

Jack told them all about his team and Torchwood bureaucracy and his troubles with weevils. The Doctor just listened and ate and laughed, a look of amazement on his face, like he'd forgotten that life actually could be enjoyable, and Rose noted with amusement that Jack's stories contained just as much nudity as ever.

"…and then," said Jack, elbows on the table and gesturing with both hands, "we end up in the kitchen, right? Four-star restaurant, so it's busy, and I mean _busy_—people running past with sauce pans knives and hurling ingredients left and right. So we're trying to sneak past, you know, act like we belong, but like I said, _half our clothes were in shreds. _So there we are, trying to dodge hot pans and burners, and then this guy, the head chef runs at us—" and he paused, grinning, as Rose dissolved into giggles, "no, no, wait for it. He runs at us, brandishing this whisk over his head, threatening us with it like it was a club, and he's shouting in French…"

As Jack worked his way up to the climax of the story, Rose leaned against the back of the booth, grinning. It was so familiar, this scene—the three of them together like this, shooting the breeze. She felt like, if she squinted, if she tilted her head just right, all those years would just fall away. She'd be nineteen again—jeans, trainers, rings on her fingers, and a ton of mascara. They'd eat and laugh, and when they were done, they'd run back to the TARDIS and set the coordinates to go anywhere, everywhere.

But as much as she would have liked to forget for awhile, those little differences were there, unavoidable—the weight of the tech in her shoulder pack or the way Jack's stories were full of his team instead of the Time Agency. The way the Doctor looked surprised when he laughed like he was just remembering how.

It would never be quite the same as it had been. At least not for her, not for Jack. Sure, they might meet up, the three of them, but it would be pinstripes and Converse, Torchwood and more Torchwood, and the burden of all those years spent apart. It would still be good, brilliant even, and still worth it, always—but it wouldn't be _this_.

"Jack," said Rose when the conversation hit a momentary lull, "tell the one about Igrus 8." When he looked at her blankly, she explained, "The hunting trip—you know, the one where you should've turned left?"

From across the table, Jack smiled at her slowly, and Rose thought that maybe she wasn't the only one feeling nostalgic.

"Jeez, give away the punch line, why don't you?" he said, rolling his eyes good-naturedly. "Yeah, sure, Rose." He took a swig of his drink and started in."So this one time, I'm on Igrus 8 with my friend Ian Brakovitch…"

.-.-.-.-.

They left the restaurant only when they started getting dirty looks from the serving staff. Jack paid and left a hefty tip with his company credit card, joking that after all Torchwood had put them through today, they ought to at least foot the bill for dinner.

"Plus," he added as they stepped out onto the pavement, "it won't hurt to have an alibi in case I need one. Pretty hard to be blowing anything up in London one minute and then go out for dinner in Cardiff in the next." Under the glare of the streetlamp, he paused and took a deep breath.

"Well," he said, turning his head to look out at the water, "I think maybe it's time for me to be going." He looked back toward the Doctor. "You ready to do the memory mod?"

"If you're sure," the Doctor replied.

Jack nodded, albeit a little nervously. "Yeah. Can't leave the fate of reality hanging for the sake of one memory."

"I will see you again, Jack," said Rose firmly, grabbing one of his hands in both of hers. She waited until he turned toward her and then she looked up into his eyes, squeezing his fingers. "I promise."

Jack's face split apart into a wide smile. "It's a date." He swooped in and grabbed her around the waist, and Rose let out a little shriek of laughter as he lifted her up. "See you later, Rose," he added, giving a quick kiss to the top of her head as he set her back down. "And Doctor," he added, turning to him with his heart in his eyes, "it was good to see you again."

The Doctor smiled and nodded. He reached a hand out, like he was going to clap Jack on the shoulder or offer to shake hands, but Jack grabbed hold of it and pulled him in to a hug.

"Yeah," said the Doctor, surprised. "It's been…nice." He patted Jack on the back awkwardly.

"Do me a favor," said Jack with a half-smile as he released him, "and leave in the bit with the ghost device. I still have to retrieve it at some point."

"I can do that," said the Doctor softly. "You'll just think you were giving it a test run."

Jack nodded. "Alright. Let's do it." He closed his eyes as the Doctor's fingers brushed his temple.

They were both silent and still for a long moment, though Jack's eyelids twitched as though he were dreaming. Then he suddenly broke away and, without a word, turned and started walking.

Rose started to call for him, but the Doctor grabbed her arm and shook his head.

"Shhh," he murmured. "Don't disturb him. He'll be in a bit of a fog for a minute or two, but he knows that he's supposed to head for home. It'll give us a chance to get out of sight."

Rose blinked away tears as she watched Jack walk off into the night. "So," she said, trying to keep her voice normal, "that's done. I've still got a couple hours left to wait—you want to go for a walk or something?"

"Nah," said the Doctor, reaching for her hand. He gave it a tug as he started walking, and she fell in stride beside him. "Let's go back to the TARDIS. There's something I want to make for you."

"What is it?"

He smiled. "Something a little more precise than Torchwood's ret-con."

Back inside the TARDIS, the Doctor started rummaging through his various storage cupboards, tossing things to Rose as he went—tools, bits of wire and circuitry, and something that Rose thought looked quite a bit like silly putty. Finally, he pulled out an old portable tape deck that, judging by the grainy faux-wood finish, was probably from the 1970s.

The Doctor gave it an approving nod. "Perfect." He carried it back to the console room and sat down on the floor, gesturing for Rose to pass him the rest of the items. She handed them over and then shrugged off her shoulder pack, settling herself down next to him to watch him work.

With the sonic screwdriver, the Doctor detached front panel from the tape deck, set it aside, and then started carefully removing the inner components. "So," he said after a long moment of silence, his eyes still on the project in his lap, "I'm curious about something."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." He wetted a finger on his tongue and then used it to get hold of a miniature screw.

"And what's that?" prompted Rose.

"You said that we'll be separated at Torchwood because of the particle engine. So why you were so dead-set against destroying it?" He carefully dropped the screw into the empty front panel for safekeeping. "Maybe could have altered things so that event never happens."

Rose shook her head. "That's a stupid question. You know why not."

The Doctor shrugged. "I'm not saying I would have done it." He looked up at her intently, his eyes inscrutable. "But you could've asked."

"Pretty sure we've had this conversation before," said Rose. "Or will have it again, from your perspective."

"Oh yeah?" The Doctor reached for his sonic screwdriver and flipped through the settings. "And what'd we decide?"

"That I'm too angelically selfless to do something like that," said Rose, batting her eyelashes a little. Then she laughed and looked away. "Nah, I'm not. The thing is," she paused for a moment, thinking it over, "I think in some ways it was good. No, I don't mean that. Not good." She shook her head. "I don't know what I mean."

"It can be hard, this sort of life," said the Doctor, his voice deceptively light. "Maybe it was nice to take a break."

Rose barked out a laugh in surprise. "No, that's not it at all. I loved it—this life, I mean. Traveling with you. And we were…we were _happy_, you and me. We were content. It was easy. I…"

She mulled it over for a moment. "I think maybe that's it. That it was easy. And I don't mean that it didn't do me good, or that I didn't learn or grow, but… But everything I've done since then has been on my own, and I've had to fight for it. Had to study, build, argue, take risks. It's not fun, doing it alone. Definitely better with two," she added softly. "But when I get back to you, it won't be because I was rescued or hitched a lift with anybody; I'll have done it myself." She smiled at him. "Done the impossible."

The Doctor smiled back at her. "Tell me how you built your Dimension Cannon, Rose."

And so she did, explaining the design and function of her impossible travel machine. She wasn't an expert on every part of the technology, but she had a thorough understanding of the basics, enough to give him a broad overview. The Doctor listened and nodded as he worked, jumping in with suggestions here and there—how to refine the temporal algorithmic targeting systems and ways to reduce post-jump dimensional retrograde .

After an hour or so, Rose yawned. Her day had started early, and she was starting to feel the effects of all that running around. She rubbed a finger over one eye, blinking sleepily, and then yawned again.

The Doctor glanced at her. "You could go get some sleep, y'know. If you want." He jerked his head toward the hallway. "There's probably a spare bedroom back there somewhere."

Rose thought about that door, two left turns and one long stretch of hall away, that had been hers and would be hers very soon—but wasn't hers _now_. She didn't think she had the heart to go open it and see the pleasant but generic bed, the empty bookshelf with no knickknacks, the walls without a scuffmark from a flying red converse that the Doctor had accidentally kicked off when his shoelaces were loose, and—

"Nah," she answered quickly. She shifted, trying to get comfortable against a coral strut. "I'm alright. I'll just camp out here."

"You sure?" The Doctor paused, one hand in midair waiting to snap a component into place. "This could still take a bit." When she just shook her head, he shrugged. "Suit yourself. There's always the jumpseat if you decide you want something more comfortable." He dropped his focus back to the project on his lap, securing the component with a flick of the sonic. "Might even be a spare cushion in one of those cupboards."

"Well…" Rose bit her lip. The rough surface of the coral strut really was digging into her back. Plus, he was sitting there, _right there_, looking exactly like she remembered. On a whim, she decided to press her luck. "Actually…I don't s'pose I could have your jacket?"

"What?" The Doctor's eyebrows shot up, and the sonic screwdriver slipped in his hand. He fumbled to recover it before it hit the floor. "What for?"

"For a pillow, of course." She moved forward onto her knees and crawled toward him. "Whenever we'd get imprisoned, you'd always do this thing with your jacket—fold it up so I could sleep on it." She reached out and tugged at the leather covering his shoulder.

She could tell she'd surprised him—the look on his face was priceless, shock and dismay and hope all warring for center stage. She just raised an eyebrow and gave another imperious tug on his sleeve, and that was enough; he set the electronics down and let her pull it off of him.

Rose held up her prize, trying not to look too pleased. "Let's see. You had this way of rolling it up so that it made a perfect pillow." She played with it for a moment, but it wasn't quite right. She frowned. "That's not it. The buttons aren't supposed to stick out. When you'd do it, it'd end up all smooth."

"Here." The Doctor held out a hand, his voice soft. "Let me see it."

He spread it out and started folding up the sleeves, tucking and aligning everything so that there wouldn't be any lumps. He was slower about it then she remembered, but, Rose supposed, this was technically the first time.

He did the final roll, bundling everything up, and then handed it to her, folded exactly the way she wanted.

She smiled, her tongue caught between her teeth. "Perfect, thanks." Shucking off her own jacket, she made a spot to lie down and put her leather pillow at the head. She settled down on it with a sigh of contentment.

The Doctor's ears had gone a bit pink, but there was a ghost of smile lurking on his face. "There're probably real pillows somewhere on this ship, you know."

"Oh, no, this is better," said Rose assuredly. "Trust me." She rubbed her thumb over the leather nostalgically. "I missed it when you…when you stopped wearing it."

The Doctor made a noise that was probably supposed to be a huff but ended up sounding far too pleased. He picked up the bits and pieces of his project and got back to work.

Rose watched him from the floor as he twisted pieces of wire together, the sleeves of his jumper sliding back along his forearms to reveal his wrists, his eyes focused intently on his work. It was a very nice image, one that she wanted to just stare at, ink into her memory if possible, but it would fade eventually, just like all her other memories of this version of him. With some effort, she managed to make the sigh coming out of her mouth sound like a yawn.

"Humans," muttered the Doctor, eyeing her. "Always wanting a nap. What's the point of all that sleep anyway?"

Rose yawned again, truthfully this time. "Yeah, well. Superior human biology," she said lightly, shifting to a more comfortable position.

The Doctor snorted. "Superior? Spending one third of your life unconscious?"

"It's true!" Rose rolled up onto one elbow because she'd been saving this particular lecture for a long time, from well before they'd been separated. She'd looked it up in the TARDIS library one day, but had never gotten the chance to use it, since he'd gotten so much more human-friendly after the regeneration. "Think about it. Humans live, what, maybe eighty years? Not a lot of time to for a brain to grow and develop."

"Well, if you have less time, seems like you should spend less of it asleep," he argued.

"But sleep makes everything more efficient. When you sleep, your mind sifts through everything you've learned and files away the important bits. You get creative, work out problems, relieve stress. See? Superior biology, packing in so much more learning per year of life." She settled back down again, a little smugly, and delivered her coup de grâce. "That's how a paltry little species like mine ended up mastering time travel."

"What!"

"It's true." She shrugged, pressing her lips together to hide a smile.

"Humans," he growled, "do not _master_ time travel."

She just lifted an eyebrow, mock-serious. "We have a Time Agency, don't we? Or will have, anyway. We travel in time, too."

He snorted. "Yeah, and an ape riding a trike in the circus is ready for the Tour de France."

"Nah, you can't get away with that with me," she said. "I've heard you go on and on about human potential. Heard you call us amazing, brilliant. Fantastic."

"Maybe some of you," he allowed gruffly.

Grinning with her tongue curled over her teeth, she reached out to poke his leg. "Oh, admit it. You like us."

"Some of you," he repeated, softer this time and with warm eyes looking right at her.

She felt the flush creep up her cheeks and pressed her face against the leather to hide it. "Well. Nothing wrong with having a few favorites."

As she closed her eyes, she heard the Doctor chuckle as he went back to work.

.-.-.-.-.

"Rose."

There was a hand on her shoulder. And again, "Rose."

She came awake with a start, blinking in the greenish light of the console room. The Doctor was leaning over her, peering down with his blue eyes, and for one bizarre moment, Rose had no idea where in time she was.

He gave her shoulder another little pat and then, after just a moment's hesitation, he carefully swept a finger over her forehead, catching a stray lock of her hair and tucking it gently behind one ear. "Sorry to wake you," he said softly, "but your five and a half hours are up. Plus, I'm all done. Come have a look."

She stared at him blankly. Then reality snapped back into focus, and she ran a hand over her face. "Right, right. The memory doohickey."

He moved back to make room as she pushed up to her feet. "That is what I was thinking of calling it, yeah," he said with a smile as he scooped the device up off the floor. "You sure you're awake enough for this?"

"Yeah," she nodded. "Just…give me a mo'." To his amusement, she hopped up and down in place, waggling her head back and forth to get her blood moving. "Ok," she said, shoving her hair back out of her face. "Go ahead."

"Alright, then. This," he explained, lifting the tape deck, its faux-wood panel back in place, "is a partial cross-orbital neural scanner. Much more precise than your ret-con because it won't leave a big blank space in the person's memory. Instead, it just deletes specific parts of memories—only the bits involving you—and only from short term memories, within forty-eight hours at the most. Anyone affected will be able to recall the events that took place, but they won't remember that you were there."

Rose frowned. "Won't that still leave gaps? I mean, I probably won't just be standing in the corner like furniture. Won't people wonder how things happened the way they happened if they can't remember that I was there?"

The Doctor shook his head. "The human brain is very good at manufacturing false memories. Any inconsistencies will just be filled in by the subject. You might end up with two people with slightly different stories, but they'll just assume the other one's got it wrong."

He pressed a tiny release button, and the front panel popped open, revealing the hidden controls. "Now, here's how you activate it, and this here? Changes the focus so that you can target multiple people at once."

He continued to walk her through the operations, making sure that she understood each setting and function, and Rose could see that he was right—it was far more sophisticated than Torchwood's ret-con. It could be used from a distance, for one, plus she could make adjustments for the period of time before memory decay. It even had some limited capacity for post-hypnotic suggestion.

"What about this one?" she asked, pointing to the one dial that he hadn't yet explained.

"Ah." The Doctor nodded uncomfortably. "That one changes the settings from human to…well, to me."

"What?" Rose looked up at him. "Why would I need that? You can just block your own memories."

"Yes, I can, but this makes it more…efficient. Less risk of information contamination, too, though it doesn't get rid of it entirely. And more importantly…" he trailed off.

"What?"

He shrugged a shoulder. "Well, you wouldn't know it from me, of course, but some of my regenerations have been sort of…stubborn. Do you really want to have to convince me over and over that blocking my memories is necessary? Now, look here," he continued quickly, pushing the device into her hands and then tapping a finger over the switch in question. "You just turn this over to the other setting here and then press the activation button—that's all you have to do. You'll have about a two minute delay before it takes effect."

Rose cradled the tape deck to her chest as she realized what he'd just given her. Not the device itself, of course—that was standard Doctor brilliance—but the sheer amount of trust he was placing in her was staggering. He was handing her the ability to hide her presence from everyone, even him, trusting that she would do what was right to protect the integrity of his mind, the timelines, and the entire universe.

Judging by the look on his face, the Doctor didn't want to make a fuss. Remember his horror of domestics, Rose just hugged the tape deck tighter. "And that'll erase your memories?"

The Doctor shook his head. "Not erase—hide. I'll block my memories of today myself, and when I do, I'll calibrate it to my own…mental filing cabinet. Then whenever you use it, the memories will all be stored in the same place, and we'll be able to unlock them when you get to where you need to be with a call and response password."

"So you'll be able to remember this," she said slowly. "Eventually."

He nodded. "As soon as you get back to the proper me. Here, let me set up the initial recall storage block." He took the device back and began the first stage of the calibration. Then he showed Rose how to activate the memory release program and waited patiently while she inputted the password that would eventually allow him to retrieve his memories. Once she was done, she handed it back to him.

The Doctor changed the settings so that he could do his final memory block, but then he paused before activating it.

"Now, you'll still need to have a care with what you do," he admonished. "Just because you erase people's memories doesn't mean you aren't still changing things in the timeline. This just helps you reduce the damage."

She nodded.

"And you need to be careful crossing the Void. Make sure to keep an eye on the fragmentation of the temporal streams, like I told you. And run that targeting diagnostic—you don't want to just pop out in the middle of an asteroid field."

"Yes, Mum," she said, grinning and rolling her eyes. "It'll be alright. We'll be careful, I promise. You just worry about showing up at my door in the morning to deal with that plastic arm. Can't let the Autons go around colonizing the Earth."

"Yeah," he agreed softly. He looked like maybe there was something else he wanted to say, but the silence just stretched out, and Rose felt compelled to fill it.

"Well. Better get going." She edged past him, moving to fetch her shoulder pack off the floor. "Thank you, though," she added seriously as she walked back to him. "For all your help. Running into you today, it was…" But the only words that fit would sound crazy, or desperate, or both. She couldn't explain to him what it meant to see him again, not when he had barely met her properly. So instead she just finished lamely, "…nice. Really, really nice."

_Oh, brilliant._ When she got back to the proper Doctor, he was going to laugh his head off, remembering this.

The whole conversation was incredibly awkward—how do you say goodbye to the man you love, Rose wondered, before he's had a chance to get to know you? Friendly handshake? A hug? There was probably some sort of special time-traveling protocol for this sort of thing, but she had no idea what it might be. (Jack would've known, she thought regretfully.)

Finally, it was his face that decided things, his expression a near-perfect copy of the one he would wear tomorrow evening when he asked her to come with him. It was all written right there, hope and fear and a desperate need for contact that she couldn't let go unanswered.

Rose leaned in with one hand on his chest to steady herself, intending to press a kiss to his cheek. And maybe she cheated just a bit, aiming a little more toward center, or maybe he turned slightly. Either way, her lips caught the corner of his mouth, lingering a half-second too long to be entirely chaste.

Under her hand, she felt the Doctor inhale sharply, and she quickly pulled away.

"Sorry." She blushed and stammered, backing away until she bumped into the railing. "I didn't mean to…anyway. I…well, I guess I should be going. Probably shouldn't keep Control waiting too long, and—"

She kept babbling, even as he stepped toward her, and she reached out a hand, thinking maybe he was going to hand her the ret-con device…

"—and who knows, maybe we'll see each other again, and—"

…But no, he was setting it down on the console….

"—and thank you for all your help and all, you were—"

…And moving toward her again, hands reaching up, maybe he was going to hug her, moving in closer and closer….

"—were really fantast—"

He kissed her.

Fingers cupping her jaw, angling her mouth up so that he could catch her top lip between his. His hands had rigged explosives, torn the arms off plastic dummies, performed percussive maintenance, but in this they were gentle, thumbs brushing lightly across the apples of her cheeks.

There was a muffled thump as her pack hit the floor.

It wasn't fair, it wasn't _remotely_ fair that he should do this now, right before she had to walk out the door, she thought as she fisted her hands in the soft wool of his jumper. As she pulled him in closer, tighter. It had been years since they were together, and for all she knew, it would be years before they were reunited, but he was going to get to go for chips with her in less than a day and _not _kiss her at the end of their first date.

So he had no business making that noise, that hungry, needful sound, as he ran his tongue over her lip. She caught his lower lip in her teeth, gave it a good hard suck.

Yeah. That'd show him.

His hands dropped to her waist as she opened her mouth for him, those clever fingers finding belt loops, tracing a line of skin at the edge of her trousers. He broke the kiss for a moment to boost her up onto the railing, putting her at eye level, and there was absolutely no question at all that she would part her thighs, make room for him to stand in-between to snog her good and proper. Her arms looped around his neck, his hands slid up her back, gripping her jacket just below her shoulder blades.

She thought she should stop. She thought she should let him go. And she thought about how the next time he kissed her, it would be to swallow death from her lips, and with a groan, hooked her ankles around his waist. His hipbones pressed into her thighs, and her fingers found the skin at the back of his neck, and oh, it was good. It was so very good.

A significant amount of time passed before they finally broke apart, and Rose thought that maybe she'd managed to ace the time-traveler's goodbye after all.

She pressed her forehead to his, a little breathless. "Well."

He licked his lips. "Yeah."

"Didn't you just meet me today?"

He bumped his nose against hers. "Well, there's that, I suppose. But…" He pulled back to look in her eyes. "It's there."

"I'll say it is," she said emphatically, and he flashed a grin.

"No, I mean, I already know that…" He paused.

"What?"

"I already know that I'll... That you…you matter." He traced the curve of her cheek with his knuckles. "You matter, Rose. I can tell."

She blinked away the tears that were threatening. "Yeah?"

"Yeah," he agreed as he pressed another soft kiss to her lips. And another. And another, only stopping when she pulled back to wipe a hand over her eyes.

She didn't want to go, but it was time. And the longer she stayed, the harder it would be. She gave him a weak smile. "I'd better…"

"Yeah." He released her, holding out a hand so that she could hop off the railing, and she gave him a quick, fierce hug once she'd landed on her feet.

The Doctor squeezed her back and then let go. "S'pose we ought to get this finished." He retrieved the ret-con device from the edge of the console and then sat down on the floor with it on his lap.

"Alright," he said seriously, "I'm going to start it up now. As soon as the light turns off, don't speak to me—just take the box and go."

She nodded.

He smiled at her. "Goodbye, Rose."

She gave him a wobbly smile in return. "Goodbye, Doctor."

His eyes closed as he began the process of blocking his own memories. About twenty seconds in, he pressed the button to start the scan. A red light shot out of it, illuminating his face, and the device made a series of hums and clicks. After another minute, the light shut off.

The Doctor was sitting completely still, his eyes still shut, and when Rose reached for the scanner, it came away easily from his limp fingers. As quietly as possible, Rose put it into her shoulder pack and, shrugging it on, walked down the ramp to the TARDIS doors.

Just before she left, she looked back. His face was peaceful, serene, waiting, and it was that image that she kept in her mind as she closed the TARDIS doors, activated her dimensional jump, and stepped through the darkness into another world.


End file.
